<p>You Go Girls!</p>
<p>Gave me a kick reading it...when I graduated out of my engineering college in 1979, there were 10 women in my class of approx. 1000 (this was in India).</p>
<p>I remember the Princeton Class of '78 had two female chemical engineers. It was so rare everyone talked about it. I even remember what one looked like and I was a humanities geek. Good for them.</p>
<p>While at Tulane Engineering Scholar Days with S in April, I noticed a pretty even balance of female/males in the enrolled student hosts. Leadership ini TECHS (Engineering Honor Society) was largely female. I guess Larry Summers hasn't been looking around much lately. ;)</p>
<p>There's more:</p>
<p>The Association of Women in Science meets next week - I'm sure Summers has given them LOTS to talk about! ;)</p>
<p>aparent5,
Thank you so much for posting that link. My daughter is interested in chemical/environmental engineering and I have printed out the news release for her to read.</p>
<p>Should what Summers said be really all that controversial? All he said was that the intelligence of men is more varied, so there are more extremely smart and extremely stupid men, then there are extremely smart or extremely stupid women, because women's intelligence deviates less from the mean. </p>
<p>Engineering and science, on the other hand, tends to attract geniuses. Put the two together, there are less women in engineering and science, simply because there are less female geniuses (and less stupid females) than male geniuses (and stupid males).</p>
<p>This is not saying that women are in any sense inferior in sciences in general, just an explanation of their underrepresentation. This explanation may be quite wrong, but banning discussion on it is quite immature and foolish. It is one of many possible factors for underrepresentation. </p>
<p>Wouldn't you expect some sort of underrepresentation when men on average perform slightly better in math, a key component in engineering and science careers?</p>
<p>And anecdotes do not prove anything.</p>
<p>The Class of 2009 at Harvard will be majority female this year. It will be a long time, I dare say, before this is the situation at CalTech. </p>
<p>"Controversy over University President Lawrence H. Summers January remarks on women and science did not appear to affect students choices in this years admissions.</p>
<p>Female admits checked yes on Harvards reply card more often than males; 79.3 percent of accepted women will arrive in Cambridge in the fall, compared to 77.8 percent of men. Fitzsimmons said the yield of female students expressing interest in the sciences was up from last year."<br>
- Harvard Crimson</p>
<hr>
<p>At Caltech, last year, only 42% of admits agreed to enroll - including those admitted from the early pool.</p>
<p>Fewer than 40% of female admits matriculated, and they made up less than 1/3 of the Class of 2008.</p>
<p>Harvard's prestige is far more 'magnetic' than any repulsive view it may hold.</p>
<p>Caltechs low yield is probably due to the major overlap in acceptances between Caltech, MIT, Stanford, Berkeley and possibly Harvey Mudd, Cooper Union, Olin, and Cornell.</p>
<p>Ashernm:</p>
<p>If any university in the world could go recruit scarce faculty resources, it is Harvard. If the school wanted more genius female science professors, it could go corner the market and buy them all up.</p>
<p>Summers would have been more honest if he had given a speech on why adding female faculty members isn't worth the bother or the expense.</p>
<p>I fail to see the relevance of your comment, interesteddad. </p>
<p>Summers sought to determine why females are underrepresented in science. Recruiting female science professors would not really fix anything;it would only enable Harvard to say "We lead the world in gender diversity in science positions" or the like.</p>
<p>I think it is relevant because it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you say that only the best can teach at Harvard, and then manage it so that females aren't teaching there, the only conclusion one can come to is that they aren't "the best".</p>
<p>Same with low-income students at Harvard. Harvard accepts those who are most qualified. They accept few low-income students. Therefore, they aren't most qualified.</p>
<p>Circular reasoning. Harvard can get away with it of course, as it is a good school, and it IS Harvard.</p>
<p>26th.</p>
<p>Of those who were admitted to CalTech but said "no thank you:"</p>
<p>44% went to MIT
17% went to Stanford
9% went to Harvard</p>
<p>thats actually interesting that caltech publishes those statistics. i wonder if other colleges/universities do the same</p>
<p>Caltech holds onto even fewer of the top admits, who it tries to entice with large "merit" scholarships.</p>
<p>Of the 30 "Axline" scholarship winners, only 20% accepted. Most went to MIT, Harvard and Stanford.</p>
<p>Of the 25 "presidential scholarships" offered (ie, affirmative action) only 36% accepted, and most preferred MIT and Stanford.</p>
<p>"I think it is relevant because it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you say that only the best can teach at Harvard, and then manage it so that females aren't teaching there, the only conclusion one can come to is that they aren't "the best".</p>
<p>Same with low-income students at Harvard. Harvard accepts those who are most qualified. They accept few low-income students. Therefore, they aren't most qualified."</p>
<p>That is highly flawed logic. So, say, an organization gives out awards. Must it give to every possible segment and subdivision of society, for otherwise it would be implying that the section of society is not deserving?
There were no blacks in the freshman class at Caltech one year, 1999. Does that mean Caltech considers blacks undeserving? No, just that no satisfactory candidates decided to attend or no satisfactory black applicants applied.</p>
<p>Let me try this in logical statements.
If you teach at Harvard, you are among the best. If P>Q
The inverse (~P>~Q)is not logically equivalent, thus suggesting your statements are incorrect.
I dont really know logic except what I learned from studying for the SAT II Math IIC, so please confirm.</p>
<p>Harvard probably does have members of both those groups. Sometimes, they are just hard to find at the level of quality Harvard seeks.</p>
<p>byerly, why does MIT and Stanford hold so much sway? Caltech seems to offer more opportunities and has brighter students. Maybe its the challenging atmosphere.</p>
<p>Here's where people went last year who Stanford admitted but who declined the offer and went elsewhere:</p>
<p>28% to Harvard
20% to Yale
13% to MIT
8% to Princeton
31% elsewhere</p>
<p>There were no blacks in the freshman class at Caltech one year, 1999. Does that mean Caltech considers blacks undeserving? No, just that no satisfactory candidates decided to attend or no satisfactory black applicants applied.</p>
<p>Let me try this in logical statements.
If you teach at Harvard, you are among the best. If P>Q
The inverse (~P>~Q)is not logically equivalent, thus suggesting your statements are incorrect.</p>
<p>Harvard probably does have members of both those groups. Sometimes, they are just hard to find at the level of quality Harvard seeks.</p>
<p>So, you mean with it's 80% yield, large numbers of low-income candidates are turning H. down to study at Amherst (with almost three times the number of low-income students attending), or Yale (with almost 50% more), or.... So either they are not applying (because it is undesirable) or they are unqualified (because they aren't being accepted.) Either explanation is quite "interesting", to say the least. (Of course, the data on "declines" only works where "all things are equal" - for low-income candidates, they almost never are.) Maybe H. is just not that attractive to highly qualified low-income candidates.</p>
<p>And same with the female faculty....it is either such an undesirable place to teach that they are going elsewhere, or there just aren't qualified female faculty to hire...and we know that because Harvard didn't hire 'em. Take your pick.</p>
<p>26th.</p>
<p>Maybe Amherst looks more kindly on low income candidates, ie less demanding in terms of academic credentials, thus admitting more and/or more importantly offers more financial aid. I dont know the reasons why. But your statement is unjustified.</p>
<p>With regards to women, does Harvard have much less women faculty in science than any other university? I suspect it is a widespread problem, the paucity of women professors in science and engineering. There are qualified women, just possibly not enough doing PhDs. According to this <a href="http://www.now.org/issues/diverse/diversity_report.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.now.org/issues/diverse/diversity_report.pdf</a> only 10-22% of PhDs in engineering are women, and up to 31% in science in general. So a relative shortage is to be expected.</p>