Anyone Think Being Female Boosts Chances of Admission at Any Top CS Schools

Applying to College
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Yes, it is more precises to phrase it as “interested in CS.”

You can view a history of acceptance rate by gender at Cornell’s School of Engineering at https://irp.dpb.cornell.edu/university-factbook/undergraduate-admissions . Note that in the most recent year, the acceptance rate among applicants to the Cornell Engineering School was 18% for women, but only 6% for men. Women had triple the acceptance rate as did men. This is suggestive a notable preference for women. The Office of Internal Research page linked above, Cornell’s website, and the previously linked article all indicate an approximate 50/50 gender balance across the full Engineering School, which seems unlikely to occur naturally without a gender preference. This apparent gender preference is also consistent with the linked article that mentions 55% female (interested) in CS. Considering CS is by far the engineering school’s most popular major, this is also the approximate degree of female representation that would be required to achieve the existing 50/50 gender balance.

Regarding the apparent discrepancy between the ASEE web page and Cornell’s, your guess is as good as mine. One contributing factor is they are evaluating different years, and the female representation has been increasing rapidly in recent years. Note how different the gender balance was 4 years ago, in the OIR stats page above. There is a delay before the entering student gender balance representation is reflected in graduation rates. Another contributing factor is the ASEE page shows more enrolled students in the engineering school that does Cornell OIR. Perhaps they are including additional categories of students beyond just the engineering school, such as CS in the A&S school, which is not expected to have a gender preference for women and as such as is expected to have a high male/female ratio Women may also may be more likely to switch to a different Cornell college than men, as you suggested.

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All colleges try to achieve gender balance these days. It’s impossible to achieve that balance in a STEM-focused college (standalone or within a larger university) without a more balanced student body within CS, because at least 1/3, and at some colleges nearly 1/2, of all STEM-leaning applicants choose CS as major initially, and the majority of them are males. If you’re a female applicant interested in CS and can present a strong application, you certainly have a better chance of acceptance than a comparable male applicant, but that odds are still low, perhaps very low at the top CS schools, because the sheer number of CS applicants in aggregate.

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“@mathmom, it would be great for the older girls who are into STEM to expose the younger girls to it. That would actually be a great EC for my daughter.”

mathmom’s suggestion for being a CS mentor for girls in middle school is an excellent one. Colleges with CS programs really want women that can mentor freshman and sophomores when they’re jrs/srs. Second, they want women in CS academia, because there are not many women professors to mentor women CS students, on the chance your daughter wants to consider that option.

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“GT graduates more female engineers than any other university… by a factor of two.”

That’s because of their enrollment being considerably larger than schools like MIT, CMU et al. If you factor that in, schools like MIT, CMU will do a lot better. There are 71 women engr faculty MIT for about 2300 engineers, GT has 83 women profs in engr for about 10,000 engineers.

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I think it’s important to remind that OP’s daughter won’t get admitted simply because she’s a gal and X or Y college wants or needs gals in stem. Nor proportions admitted or who grads with a stem degree.

This is like the eternal argument about Early apps. No boost if you don’t match the entirety of what that college wants. In holistic, that is.

First, you need to match. Academics and other. Then, in the end, being female may add a tip, IF the college needs more gals and you’re a top contender.

No magic fairy dust.

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@SincererLove, thanks for the suggestion about CS ECs. Did your daughter do a Summer camp? I’m not familiar with them at all. Maybe I can still find one. Did your daughter do a lot of ECs? Vanderbilt is my favorite of all of the schools on her list. Is she glad she chose Vanderbilt?

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@WalknOnEggShells , D17 did the Lehigh Engineering Camp (SEI), competitive but free 6 week Engineering camp. A lot of her fellow camp-goers ended up with some top Engineering schools. I think it might be too late to get into the camp now though.

She did years of math team (from mathcounts), 4 year robotics team, coding/app challenges, TEAMS, etc. She also did a lot of journalism reporting/writing, FBLA, debate, and political activism. HS Swimming and lettered all four years. She followed her interests, and she had a lot of interests. Lol

D17 got admissions or scholarship or being scholarship finalists from several schools on your list. GT Stamps finalist, Duke Robertson finalist, Vandy full tuition merit scholarship. Her top choice was down to MIT, U Chicago and Vandy. She visited all three of them, and picked Vandy for more beauty sleep, and potentially higher GPA for medical school. No, she didn’t go for prestige there. She has been thriving there. She holds multiple leadership positions in organizations around the campus, writing, DJing, doing paid research in a lab and being CS TA. Very busy bee, but very happy at Vandy.

Hope this helps!

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The primary reason why GeorgiaTech has many female engineers is because they have many engineers in total. The report you referenced also mentions that GT had the most total engineers for 6 of the 8 listed engineering specific majors. The report states that GeorgiaTech was not among any of the colleges listed with a high % female in the report (report only went to top 24). In any case, the OP asked about CS, rather than engineering. According to IPEDS, among the top ~200 most selective colleges, the ones with the most female CS degrees in 2016-17 were:

  1. UW -- 159 (36% Women)
  2. MIT -- 129 (38% Women)
  3. Indiana -- 125 (23% Women)
  4. UCB -- 123 (25% Women)
  5. UCSD -- 113 (19% Women)

Among highly selective, not all-female, colleges with a significant sample size of 25+ CS graduates, the ones with the highest percent female CS degrees were:

  1. Harvey Mudd (41% Women)
  2. Vassar (40% Women)
  3. Georgetown (38% Women)
  4. MIT (38% Women)
  5. Swarthmore (37% Women)
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You can find data on applications, admits and yield broken down by gender in each school’s Common Data Set.

Lots of great info to be found in those. Iirc generally speaking (each school is different), significantly fewer women apply to stem schools. They have higher admit rates (although 8% v10% isn’t enough to change anyone’s expectations on acceptance. It is still highly unlikely you will get accepted if you are female). Female admits also generate lower yields - supporting the idea that women are more likely to have multiple acceptances and more choices.

For big publics the CDS doesn’t help answer the question because they don’t break down the admissions info by major.

But as a general proposition, women are in more demand in stem schools . But not in a way that should change anyone’s strategy.

Anecdotally, I heard a well-known LAC AO speak recently. He practically begged students to apply to non-stem programs. The competition is less fierce now that stem is so popular. I expect that the gender admissions numbers are flipped for the humanities and traditional liberal arts as a result. Male English majors are more in demand.

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@BunnyBlue, thanks for the info. I’m gonna have her look into getting some kind of significant position for next year.

@PurpleTitan, I’ve mentioned those schools to her. I know they’re great schools, but she’s looking for a smaller environment. I think Cornell and Georgia Tech will even feel too big to her when she visits. Thanks for the suggestions, though.

@privatebanker, thanks for that anecdote. That’s pretty amazing that 9 of the top 10 were women and that so many were going into STEM. Our high school must be an outlier. My daughter said she’s one of only two girls in her AP Java class. I’m not sure how many boys there are.

@intparent, did your daughter like Harvey Mudd? I think it’s too small for my daughter, but we might visit it if we make a California trip.

@1NJParent, I had no idea CS was so much more popular than Engineering. I guess it makes sense though, with all of the Software jobs out there.

@theloniusmonk, good point about females in academia in CS. I haven’t asked her about that, but it wouldn’t surprise me if she ends up wanting to go to grad school.

@SincererLove, yikes she is a busy bee. Forget beauty sleep, does she sleep at all?

@Data10, could you tell me where you found those stats for females. I went into IPEDS, but I can’t find that info.

@lookingforward, any tips on how to figure out what kinds of STEM ECs these elite colleges really like? It’s probably too late anyway, but I would love to know what kind of ECs impress these schools the most. For example, Summer camps were mentioned here a couple of times, but I saw an article this afternoon that was arguing that a Summer job is more highly regarded than a Summer camp. I’ll try to post it if I can find it. What do you think about camps versus jobs?

@CateCAParent, I’m surprised that even the LACs are feeling the push toward STEM. Was this a LAC with strong STEM programs?

Thanks for the responses everyone.

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My daughter adored Harvey Mudd. I’d suggest you visit. Most kids know pretty much right away whether it is their place or not.

72

I think we are going to end up out there some time this summer, so we’ll definitely check it out.

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Just updating the stats for Mudd from post #67, 56% of the CS majors in the class of 2018 were women.

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@WalknOnEggShells - yes, the LAC had strong stem.

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Interested in hearing how that visit to Mudd goes. It was #1 on our son’s CS college list until he visited. Then it dropped off his list entirely. It was after that visit that I understood just how important college environments can be to prospective students.

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“if you don’t match the entirety of what that college wants. In holistic, that is.”

No one is saying you would get in just because you have decent stats and ECs and are a girl. However it is not a secret that CS programs, esp the top ones, are trying to recruit more women and importantly get women to stay with CS/Engr. Holistic means gender, context, how colleges can help with the gender gap in tech and prospective students fit that. Definitely about fit, agree there. So a 1540 female with 800 Math typically goes econ, finance, pre-med (bio, chem etc.), so someone interested in CS will get interest, doesn’t mean they get in, but they’re not getting glossed over. The girls in cs thread talked about how intro to CS classes are being changed to be more accommodating, not biased to kids who’ve already coded, because, at places like Stanford, Berkeley, CMU, those are institutional goals. And if you can meet those kinds of goals, your odds of getting in are a little better.

"GT Stamps finalist, Duke Robertson finalist, Vandy full tuition merit scholarship. Her top choice was down to MIT, U Chicago and Vandy.

That’s an impressive list of CS acceptances, any commonalities between your daughter and OP’s to help the OP with his question.

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@WalknOnEggShells , she usually has 7 or 8 hours. She has pretty good time Management skills. She never went to bed after 10 30 in high school even with 6 APs and two daily swimming practices.

As the other posters implied, D and I both believe that her CS major actually hurt her chance in getting GT Stamps or Robertson. She is not as unique as someone who has applied Geology and French double major or a creative media major. There were so many CS majors out there and D is not that unique or impressive enough. I also believe D would have gotten into those schools. The only exception is MIT. What helped her clinched the admission might have been the swimming recruitment questionnaire she filled out (I didn’t know, lol). She is not that fast, nor recruited athlete. But she received an email from the swimming coach days before pie day. That might be her only hook for a hookless girl.

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@Rivet2000, I’ll definitely post her impression of Harvey Mudd if we make it out there. It is pretty amazing how kids know as soon as they step on a campus sometimes.

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^^My daughter was practically spinning like Maria in the Alps when she found the school she likes. Looking up and saying “This is it.”

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@SincererLove, when you say there were so many CS majors out there, do you mean at your daughter’s high school or just applying to colleges in general? And were there a lot of girls studying CS at your daughter’s high school?

It’s weird, maybe it’s just our school, but I don’t see that many kids in CS. As a rough estimate, I’d say there are around 40 kids in each year of CS and there are around 275 kids in each grade. That doesn’t seem like that many kids taking CS, but maybe they’re just not doing a good job of getting kids interested.

Out of the 40 in each year, it sounds like there are around 4 - 7 girls. The high end of that range(7) puts the male/female ratio at around 4.7, which is just above UCLA’s ratio of 4.5. So we seem to have a low number of kids in CS, and a male/female ratio that is dead average. My daughter said her teacher mentioned that interest and class sizes have been rising, so maybe we’re just a little behind the curve.