This paper, presented at the conference on Now What: Affirmative Action and Higher Education in 2004 and Beyond in Ithaca, NY, traces the barriers faced by Jews in obtaining access to higher education in the first half of the 21st century and the history of how those barriers were broken. The author then draws a parallel to the barriers faced by today’s underrepresented minorities in selective higher education and attempts to make gains in the ability of those minorites to attend public and private institutions.