Volume 67, Issue 4

Yeshiva Grads Fare Well in Grad School Placement

by Eli Isak

The good news is that, as in the past, last year’s Yeshiva graduates enjoyed relative success in graduate school acceptance and are now attending prestigious schools nationwide. The better new is that the relatively high acceptance rate seems to have anchored itself at Yeshiva, particularly in the arenas of medicine and law.

According to the Marsha Stern Talmudical Academy’s Dean, Rabbi Michael Hecht, who also serves as the College’s pre-law advisor, despite the fierce competition, an impressive 93 percent of Yeshiva graduates received acceptances from at least one American Bar Association accredited school.  Hecht attributed this fantastic success primarily to the high quality of the class indicative in their LSAT scores: Yeshiva’s mean applicant score placed in the 83rd percentile.  Of those, one-third scored in the top five percent of the nation.  Many have credited this already annual success to an extensive background in Talmud study, which is said to enhance skills tested on the LSAT.  Among the 85 graduates who applied, there were multiple acceptances to top tier law schools such as Harvard, Columbia, NYU, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Hecht also noted that this year’s competition for acceptance was unparalleled.  “To the best of my memory, competition for acceptance into law schools last year was the toughest to date with the exception of one other year,” said Hecht.  He cited a number of reasons for this phenomenon.  For the incoming class of ’01, he explained, many law schools miscalculated their number of applicants and were forced to defer quality students to this year’s incoming class, greatly reducing the available seats for new candidates.  In addition, the number of applicants to law schools from Yeshiva last year, 85, is significantly higher than the typical maximum of 50.  These students, coupled with the droves of former Yeshiva graduates abandoning the burst “dot bomb” bubble for a career in law, have clogged the Jewish student demographic.  And Hecht doesn’t foresee any significant change in these numbers for next year.

In order to sustain these impressive numbers, an ’02 Yeshiva College graduate, Jeremy Herskowitz, currently at Columbia School of Law recommends that “The best way to really increase your chances of getting into the top school of your choice is to apply early.”

Although Yeshiva’s pre-meds didn’t fare as well as their pre-law counterparts, they results were still impressive.  Of the 60 students who applied to various health-related schools, including dental, optometry, and podiatry, 52 students, or 87 percent, were accepted.  However, Coordinator of Pre- Med Advisement Dr. Stefan Bosworth, who works closely with applicants throughout the application process, notes that this figure has risen slightly since last year.  Why the change? 

According to Bosworth, there is an interesting phenomenon within each year’s number of applicants to medical schools.  The business marketplace has a tight reverse correlation with the number of med school applications; however, it typically takes about two years to take effect.  This explains the drop in med school applications over the last several years in response to the market boom that collapsed a year and a half ago.  It’s only a matter of time, reasons Bosworth, until the recent recession catches up with medical school applications and sends them shooting through the roof.

Yet Bosworth did assert  that medical school applications from Yeshiva students would remain stable regardless of the economic situation, for better or for worse, because, “Yeshiva guys go into it for the right reasons and put the money second.”

This year’s applicants to medical schools did not share the multiple acceptances to top tier schools that were enjoyed by law school candidates.  Other than two students at Yale and one at Penn, last year’s graduates are largely missing from the upper echelon, despite their typically superior MCAT scores.

Yeshiva graduate David Sturm (’02), now in his first year at NYU School of Medicine, offered an explanation for this development.  “A lot of the guys scored well above the average score usually looked for in top schools but were rejected anyway.  It’s probably because all the best schools are most interested in maintaining a diverse student body, and well, there are a lot of New York Jews,” he averred.

The only top school that accepted a relatively high number of Yeshiva graduates is the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, which is under Yeshiva auspices.  Their number of acceptances, 17, is three times higher than that of any other school, and most students attribute this success to Einstein’s affiliation with Yeshiva.

Other graduates chose to bide their time and defer application to graduate school.  Aaron Brody (YC ’02) chose to enroll in the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary this year and plans to enter law school next fall.  Reflecting on his decision, Brody said, “If you can manage to take a year off before starting graduate school, it’s really something worth doing.”

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