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I was 13, I think, when I went to compete in the all-Ukrainian math olympiad, back a bunch of years ago when it was called a "republican" olympiad because Ukrai
by anatoly 15y ago
I was 13, I think, when I went to compete in the all-Ukrainian math olympiad, back a bunch of years ago when it was called a "republican" olympiad because Ukraine was a republic in the USSR and not a separate country. It was a long event: delegations from all the regions came and were housed in a sort of summer camp for two weeks. As we were getting registered, one of the organizers who was getting everyone's details for the official forms told me she needed to know my ethnicity.
I was pretty naive, and after thinking it over for a few minutes I decided to ask her for advice. I said to her: "Well, I'm really not sure what to tell you, see, my mother's Jewish, and my father's Ukrainian. Can you write them both? Or am I supposed to choose somehow? What do you think?" I'd actually thought it through a bit more and was ready to continue telling her how my parents were divorced and I was living with my mother so I should probably choose that side... but I decided to wait for her response first.
She looked at me a bit funny (I think now that she was trying to see if I was being ironic. I wasn't). She held a pause. And then she said firmly: "Let's just write you up as a Ukrainian, shall we?"
- jpdoctor 15y agoIt reminds me: I believe in Feyman's day, Jews were fighting a similar problem to Asians now. I'm pretty sure that SAM (a Jewish frat?) was gone by the 80s at MIT, as a calibration point. Edit: I was a little confused, he was turned away from Columbia for being Jewish. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_quota http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_quota
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- neutronicus 15y agoI remember reading an article in ... I believe it was the New Republic ... that said that the "holistic admissions process" of today, with the essays, activities, etc. supplanted the earlier more test-scores / grades-centric approach at the Ivy League precisely in an attempt to admit fewer Jews.
- tokenadult 15y agoI remember reading an article . . . that said that the "holistic admissions process" of today, with the essays, activities, etc. supplanted the earlier . . . approach at the Ivy League precisely in an attempt to admit fewer Jews. The much-cited article on the subject is by Malcolm Gladwell, and was first published in the New Yorker. http://www.gladwell.com/2005/2005_10_10_a_admissions.html http://www.gladwell.com/2005/2005_10_10_a_admissions.html The article is a review of a book by Jerome Karable, which gives many details of the history of admission policies at selective United States universities.
- tzs 15y agoIsaac Asimov also ran into Columbia's Jewish quota.
- rdl 15y agoSAM disappeared at MIT due to reasons specific to the chapter; it got overrun with non-frat members living there, and various other weirdness in the 1970s, and the house voted to leave the fraternity, then become an MIT co-ed independent living group, Fenway House. It sort of became the GLBT place at some point too, and was generally both small (15-30 students) and weird. I lived there as an undergrad in the 1990s. The most famous alum is probably Lori Berenson, who was held by the Peruvian government for years for (maybe inadvertently) supporting a terrorist organization.
- jpdoctor 15y agoThanks for the history of Fenway house, I didn't know it. (I was EC, of 80s vintage. Ashdown in the 90s.) > it got overrun with non-frat members living there Presumably because they couldn't fill the beds and needed the money?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- tomp 15y agoNot directly related to the OP's topic, but I've been wondering about these questions for a long time, maybe you can answer them: 1) Why do you consider being Jewish an etnithicity? (Why not just religion?) 2) Do most other Jews also think the same way?
- dennisgorelik 15y agoShe gave you very valuable advise.
- r00fus 15y agos/advise/advice/