A Comprehensive Analysis of Which Yeshivot and Seminaries YU Students Attend

Yeshiva University undergraduates are a diverse group of students. Students hail from all over the world and have many diverse backgrounds. One important point in students’ backgrounds is where they studied in Israel yeshivot and seminaries. Women who attend Stern College for Women (SCW) or Sy Syms School of Business (SSSB) have attended 53 different Israel schools, while men currently enrolled in either Sy Syms School of Business or Yeshiva College (YC) have studied in 46 unique yeshivot for a grand total of 99 different institutions.

The dataset for the purpose of the analysis was provided by YU’s Office of Institutional Research & Assessment (OIR). The dataset was a total of students who are currently enrolled in the Israel Program (IP) and those who have transferred credits from an Israel school through the Israel Program. Students who may have switched Israel schools after the first year in the Israel Program are counted only in their school in which they accrued their IP credits. The data is accurate for this Fall 2018 semester.

The S. Daniel Abraham Israel Program is “an educational partnership between Yeshiva University and more than 45 yeshivot and seminaries in Israel,” according to Yeshiva University. The program allows students to be enrolled in Yeshiva University and accrue college credits while studying in Israel schools throughout Israel on diverse campuses.

According to the Fall 2018 Yeshiva University Fact Book (also prepared by OIR), there are currently 2,727 undergraduate students enrolled at Yeshiva University. The Israel Program (IP) dataset shows a total of 2,955 students for this Fall 2018 semester, less than a 10 percent difference. The differences are due to the difficulty in maintaining up to date records of all of the students in Israel, as they sometimes switch between programs and take leave.

Currently, there are 2,727 enrolled undergraduate students at Yeshiva University. 622 of those students are currently studying in Israel, and the remaining 2,105 are studying at the Beren and Wilf campuses. On Wilf Campus, there are 554 students enrolled in the Sy Syms School of Business, which is 5 percent larger than Yeshiva College’s 527 currently-enrolled students.

On the Beren Campus, Stern College for Women heavily outweighs Sy Syms School of Business enrollment, with 808 women enrolled in SCW and only 164 students in SSSB.

According to the Israel dataset — which documents 2,955 students and their whereabouts this Fall 2018 semester — 255 women and 242 men “never went to Israel.”

Of the top seminaries and yeshivot represented on campus, there are several who maintain the largest contingencies. On Wilf Campus, Netiv Aryeh has 187 alumni on campus, followed by Sha’alvim for Men (167) and then Shaarei Mevaseret Zion (122). On Beren Campus, Sha’alvim for Women’s 174 alumnae take rank, followed by 170 former Michlelet Mevaseret Yerushalayim (MMY) students and then 142 Midreshet Moriah students.

The average number of students per seminary in Israel and New York is 21.7 students, with a median value of two. Each men’s yeshiva sent an average of 29 students, and a median value of six students.

The dataset lends to some interesting takeaways. Netiv Aryeh has 80 alumni enrolled in SSSB, which is double the 40 Netiv students enrolled YC. Yeshivat Har Etzion (Gush) has only six students in the business school, compared to 52 enrolled in Yeshiva College. Reishit Yerushalayim students were over five times as likely to attend SSSB compared to YC.

16 percent of women are enrolled in SSSB. This percentage is relatively consistent among seminaries, with Tiferet and Midreshet Moriah being outliers, as 38 percent and 24 percent percent, respectively, of their alumnae are enrolled in SSSB.

The top five seminaries — Sha’alvim for Women, MMY, Midreshet Moriya, Tiferet and Harova — whose alumnae make up the downtown campus population have a total of 715 students, which makes up about 65 percent of the total 1,140 female students in the dataset. The alumni from the top five yeshivot — Netiv Aryeh, Sha’alvim for Men, Torat Shraga, Shaarei Mevaseret Zion and Yeshivat Hakotel — make up a similar 55 percent of the 1,308 male students from the dataset.

As with other data-driven Commentator pieces, explanations for yeshiva and seminary sizes are beyond the scope of this article.