<p>Does affirmative action exist for engineering students at the graduate level (M.Eng, MS, PhD)? </p>
<p>I am fairly naive with this topic. My friend and I were talking about our odds of getting into certain grad schools. When discussing her stats, she said ". . . Plus I'm a female which substantially increases my chances for admissions." Since I'm a white male this has me worrying a bit bc I am at the threshold of getting into some solid schools but it's certainly no guarantee.</p>
<p>Also, if it does exist, to what magnitude are the policies applied? Is it simply a tie-breaker among applicants or is it weighted much higher (EX: a 3.4 URM accepted over a 3.8 white male with all other stats the same - kind of a stupid example but I'm just trying to get the point across)? </p>
<p>I would like to add that I am NOT making a social or political statement. I'm just wondering if anyone has any experience with this or has worked with admissions.</p>
<p>Your question certainly sounds interesting, and it’s one I would like to know the answer to as well. Although I had heard that affirmative action did not exist in any Graduate Schools, I could be mistaken.</p>
<p>Nobody can guarantee bias in admission, such as religion, ethnicity and gender. In essence, such bias only remains a small fraction in the overall admission. How could you tell if the admission staff are bias on the female because many of the staff are male? What if there are more male acceptance and most of the admission staff are female? Admission is not done with one person. It’s very often multiple people who make the decision. This is not high school. </p>
<p>While graduate school do look at underrepresented minority, and the fact that people assume there are more male in science and engineering than female, this is already 21th century, people really look at every credential carefully. </p>
<p>There is racism, sex-bias, and all that, but this is a real world. If you fail you fail. A good graduate school is known for its fair admission policy. If they say they take URM into account, they will explicitly say it.</p>
<p>More likely to get admitted? No. More likely to get money? Yes. Schools do not tend to lower their standards for minorities for graduate admissions, but they will fight tooth and nail for the few good ones.</p>
<p>All universities and colleges practice affirmative action. Some schools just claim not to. The reality is, there are so few blacks, hispanics, and American Indians (in terms of their proportion to the population) that even make it to college with the necessary math and science skills, and even fewer who complete an undergrad degree in engineering, that those who make it to the grad-ready level don’t find it hard to get snatched up at just about anywhere.</p>
<p>To the whiners, note that <em>I</em> am not making a political statement either. It’s simply a statistical reality that blacks, hispanics, and American Indians tend to do significantly worse academically than other ethnic groups (including minorities such as non-American blacks, Indians, East Asians, etc.). Why that disparity exists is for another thread (hopefully a Whistleblower-free one).</p>
<p>“Schools do not tend to lower their standards for minorities for graduate admissions, but they will fight tooth and nail for the few good ones.”</p>
<p>You should amend that sentence to reflect the fact that only so-called under-represented minorities are the target of such bidding. So-called over-represented minorities (every engineering major knows what I mean) may even be turned away. In the words of one admissions officer at an elite university who was quoted in some article “not another Asian math whiz!”</p>
<p>Actually I wouldn’t be surprised if being a white guy didn’t help you in some fields. There are so. many. asians. in engineering grad school it’s ridiculous.</p>
<p>Well, being an American citizen helps you in grad school, since if they didn’t set aside slots for citizens, engineering and science grad schools would be like 90% foreign students and that bothers the powers that be. And since among American citizens white males dominate among students interested in engineering, you could say that being a white guy helps you.</p>
<p>I’m all for more women in engineering, personally. I’m still in the preliminary calc and science classes and I’m getting mighty sick of a class room full of guys who look like me. Bring on the hotties!</p>
<p>I guess this thread refers to funded graduate programs, because…</p>
<p>In non-funded professional graduate programs, a nice steady tuition-reimbursement check from your employer AND past work experience really helps getting into graduate school.</p>
I don’t know if I should get offend by this, since I am Asian, and I am a Chinese.</p>
<p>It is not ridiculous. Consider there are many international students. Let’s cross out that population. We are left with high school graduates who are Asian and they attend engineering schools. People always assume that Asian are good at math and science. It is totally wrong. </p>
<p>There are 3primarily reasons why there are so many Asian students in science today: Asian parents like their children to be involved with science and math, and they put them into preparation programs that hopefully would bolster their knowledge and math and science; and secondly, the propaganda so called “Asian for science, Asian for math”. </p>
<p>The third reason is a bit cryptic, but definitely a true statement - social change. The Asian community is raising, and the income affects the quality of education, as well as the confident that Asian decedents could get a job in science because people see Asian people smarter. Many decades ago science and engineering fields were dominated by White male because of the social view at those time. I can’t say it’s totally a racism, but a mixture of social constraint. Did the society at those time belittle immigrants, and minority, which include the Asian?</p>
<p>Yes. Many decades ago Asian people, especially the Chinese and Japanese were viewed as domestic threat to the States. This view was gradually washed away after 1970. </p>
<p>The other thing that I don’t like is the idea of “unfortunate consideration”.
I know how being a minority can be a difficult thing. Certainly if you are a minority, and you work hard to get through the difficulty and decide to become a scientist / engineer, you should be rewarded. But rewarded =/= consideration, and give a slightly advantage over the others work as hard they do?</p>
<p>Beside that, I have to admit that most of these statistical reality is a reflection of poverty and social constraint, which we really should remove. We now go back to this “social distribution 101” and “education resource distribution 101”.</p>
<p>It’s a different type of admissions process in grad school, at least in math and physics. It is the specific department (math, physics, engineering) that admits the student, not the school itself. And mostly the committee consists of faculty from that department.</p>
<p>At this stage, they would rather prefer someone who can do research and contribute to the academic prestige of their program rather than worrying about the “socio-economic distribution” of their graduate pool.</p>
<p>jwxie, I suggest you read the book “The Economics and Politics of Race” by Sowell, or at least the section on Chinese immigrants. I think it will give you a better understanding of how Chinese immigrants have fared all over the world, not just in America.</p>