@bluebayou - yes. 60% of Calc BC are male, and 80% of engineering students are male, which suggests there is some room in the application pool. (It also begs the question whether AP BC Calc is a good predictor of engineering success. It would be very interesting to look at the pool of women applicants to UCSD and see how good the correlation is.)
But the question has to be why have the UCs been unable to take up that slack? Especially since they say they want to.
MIT has been able to take up that slack. CIT has been able to take up that slack. UVa has been able to take up that slack. UPenn has been able to. Most of the ivies in fact. And their grad rates and ranking have not fallen.
Moving toward gender balance needs to be considered at all levels, but the fact remains, UCs have not increased (substantially) their female and URM engineering enrollment numbers despite pledging to. I know some folks seem to think that is fine, but I don’t.
I think that if a serious, well-funded, public school identifies a weakness in their program and vows to address it they should be held to account.
@Ynotgo No. It is not the law. That is incorrect. We all know about 209. But it does not require an 80/20 gender split. In fact, the consistency of that split suggest that gender is being taken into account.
In spite of 209 UCB LS is roughly 50/50. In spite of 209 UCSD outside of engineering is roughly 50/50. Etc. Etc. etc. etc. etc.
It is only engineering where this imbalance persists. The law in no way requires an 80/20 split. And, as the UCSD engineering GPA data suggests, the current standards for admission restrict the admission of the more successful candidates.
If the data in post #359 is correct, aren’t women getting accepted at a higher rate than men for engineering at Cal? Seems like the main issue is in the number of applicants and the yield.
UC admissions are "BLIND’ when it comes to “race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, PUBLIC EDUCATION , or public contracting.”
that IS what prop 209 changed. It IS the law. So they CANT sort applications by sex to select a more evenly balanced engineering applicant pool. And because there still are MORE boys than girls who apply to engineering programs at UC’s there will probably be more boys who are accepted into UC engineering programs.
"MIT has been able to take up that slack. CIT has been able to take up that slack. UPenn has been able to. Most of the ivies in fact. "
Those are PRIVATE universities, who can accept whom they want, in what ever mix of race, sex, ethnicity or national origin that pleases them.
The UC’s , which are a PUBLIC institution and are therefore required to follow Calif Law. AND prop 209, dont have that privilege.
get it??
@youcee No. The main issue is NOT the number of applicants. That is incorrect.
The number of female applicants has increased over time (see, for instance, the UCB COE CS&E and LS CS stats that I posted earlier. UCB COE CS&E had a 4x increase in female applicants in a very short time.)
The main issue is the PROPORTION of male applicants to female applicants. The UCs manage to maintain a consistency of PROPORTION between the total # of male applicants and the total # of female applicants - which, I think, is kinda suspicious…
And yes, yield is a big issue. Those same UCB COE and LS numbers show that the LS CS department increased yield dramatically as more women were admitted to the program. The UCB COE CS&E was much less successful.
Yield is a very realistic place the UC engineering schools could and should do a dramatically better job. Any woman (or URM) who is accepted but does not SIR is a lost opportunity to fix the imbalance they have identified and vowed to correct. It is a student they want. How can they get that student to the school? One major failure of the departments is that they have not been able to improve their yield. Is that intentional? Through inept management? Poor strategy? They should be able to compete with many schools on price, quality and location. Why is the yield not improving?
@menloparkmom I never suggested selecting based on gender. I suggest that there is something in the selection criteria that actually selects against women. The criteria/structure is perhaps biased. What keeps the proportion so static when the raw numbers are changing? That seems odd.
Again, no one has explained to me why women at UCSD do better EVERY YEAR (save one) in engineering. To me, it suggests that the criteria are flawed.
On top of that, there is yield. The men’s yield is higher than women’s as well. Why are the UCs so poor at attracting women? What is it about their outreach?
Maybe the perspective students have interaction with the “human calculators” rather than the “human engineers.”
The yield is probably lower because the girls who have the GPA and test scores to get into top UC engineering programs are probably getting great offers from Stanford, Mudd, MIT, CMU etc… The schools that have the freedom to put their thumbs on the scale for girls are going to jump at the chance to get a girl with a 4.6 gpa and lots of stem AP classes. That’s only going to leave the upper middle class donut kids who won’t get FA for the UC programs.
Some women that have the SAT’s, interest in engineering , and would be competitive for admission to places like UC Berkeley , may also be being courted by privates that are looking to add to their diversity numbers. Some women might be more inclined to want a smaller engineering school, may have gotten admission to very competitive privates, may have been offered money or access to special programs for women, etc. There is no way of knowing that unless the schools are surveying every student that did not accept admission. One of my sons is dating a young woman from California that graduated from Harvey Mudd in Computer Science. I would imagine a young woman who went to Harvey Mudd would not necessarily be the best fit for places like UC Berkeley and UCLA.
Please stop lecturing Calidad2020 “get it” It is insulting. It is a very real world problem that can be fixed and needs to be worked on.
Lots of people have actually worked on it. Some of the keys to the solution are as follows. Make sure that future tenure track hires include a significant portion of females. They often do not. Make sure that the departments in question have women in engineering groups so that female students in the engineering departments feel comfortable.
Make sure that all faculty and graduate students have to go through gender inclusivity training every semester. Make sure there is outreach to the local high schools to try and encourage women to apply for engineering school. Make sure there is lectures and conferences in which prominent female engineers participate. A system which is set up to perpetuate gender discrimination is not a good one.
You’re playing semantics. If the number of female applicants increases without the males increasing, the proportion will change. Not sure why that needs to be spelled out, it seems obvious. You failed to mention the number of male applicants has also increased.
I sincerely hope you are not projecting a negative attitude onto whatever college your daughter decides to attend. Speaking from experience, it can be very frustrating when your high stat kid is not accepted to UCLA or UCB for engineering. When 2300+ and 800s are not good enough. But there are more than 2-3 great schools in California and they can excel elsewhere and have a great college experience.
Sure, of course there are “reasons” the yield is low. No kidding. Some of those very reasons were called out in a letter in 2011 - and earlier, like the MIT conference on faculty in the 90s or early 2000s. Dean Sastry responded to the letter. Vowed to take action. Vowed to fix things and then…
It is really illuminating how quick everyone is to explain away the problem and attack the messenger. It is also rather depressing. Why don’t we actually, you know, pressure people to fix it?
It is one thing that this will hurt the women of California, but it will also hurt the taxpayers of California. OOS/International student will, in large part, go home. So we are selling our seats for short-term gain.
Meanwhile, the Cali girls are going to Boston and Philly and NYC and Ann Arbor and Seattle… Sad and pointless.
“the “Cali girls” are going to Boston and Philly and NYC and Ann Arbor and Seattle.” That is the type of choice that anyone has if they don’t like the instate options that are available to them.
That same argument can be made for men as well. Why should qualified men in California that want to go to UCB or UCLA have to go elsewhere? There are just not enough slots for qualified applicants and some applicants just don’t want to go to schools that they find less desirable. If the goal is to get an engineering degree, there are lots of paths to do so .
From #155 for the following link.
Applicants with excellent stats and ECs are been rejected and waitlisted by top schools all the time.
“Does anybody know if stats play into getting off the waitlist at all? I think my stats are pretty good (4.6W, 4.0UW, 2350, 100+ volunteer hours, and won a fair number of CS competitions), but my counselor said that getting off the waitlist depends entirely on your demographics/major and if they need any more of that demographic in that specific major. As an asian male who applied EECS, I’m pretty sure they don’t need any more asian males…”
The state bans on affirmative action have had interesting effects. While the political focus was on the elimination of preferences for AAs and Latinos, those measures also banned consideration of gender.
The net net of the data from CA and Mich is that the bans help Asians and females at the expense of males, AAs and Lations.
UCLA is 56/44 female these days. UCB, because of its big engineering program, is more like 52/48 – but still majority female.
Engineering is one of the few places where the guys can still beat out the girls in a gender blind process.
I know nothing about UC engineering admission stats, but I do know about my daughter’s personal experience as an EE admit to UCLA (and other UCs though she declined their acceptances). They were wonderful. She was given access to mentors, the professors were mostly very supportive, and she enjoyed her fellow students. I agree with the other posters who stated that the women accepted into UCB/UCLA/UCSD’s engineering programs were also accepted into Harvey Mudd, MIT, etc. Those private programs offer so much more than the public universities, and they are very hard to decline.
Also, schools like UCLA have some downsides for engineering majors, and many students we know declined their UCLA acceptances because of these issues. One that impacted my kid the most was that the classes are very theoretical, not very hands on. To augment that, students have opportunities to learn hands on through clubs and research opportunities (if you can get undergrad research), but with a pressure-cooker of a very large public university’s 10 week quarter-system while taking 4 engineering/math classes plus labs, it is hard to find time to do the clubs, study, and sleep. Many, many sleepless nights. UCLA was very upfront at orientation about the demands of the program. Over the years, we have found many of our children’s friends opted for non-UC universities that have engineering classes with more of a mix of theory and hands-on work because the theory-based curriculum was not attractive to them. (Disclaimer: after two years our daughter transferred out of EE, solely because she fell in love with another major - not due to grades or rigor.)
The answer to your question is simple. Because Dean Sastry, President Napolitano, and many others in UC administration have stated that increased gender and URM diversity is important to the program and they are committed to that goal.
There are only a few ways to improve the gender diversity:
Cut down on the number of OOS/international men, so In State men’s number aren’t affected. (which, as I noted, could easily be done at least marginally by increasing OOS/International tuition)
Increase the total number of students accepted to the COE school.
Increase the number of women accepted at the expense of other non-female students. (Which btw is what happened to the female students from 2008 to 2011. More men were accepted to COE at the expense of female students.)
Of course qualified students of all genders (and ethnicity and geographical area) don’t get in. That is one reason to decrease the OOS/International students admitted.
But the issue of qualified students not being admitted is different than gender and URM diversity. The circular nature of this argument is telling.
Regardless of state/country of reisdence, by definition, that will require the use of gender, which is a no-no in California.
Doable, but that will require a huge amount of money to expand facilities.
See point one. And don’t forget, the S, T, and M in STEM are in the College of Letters and Sciences, so you are you suggesting that L&S admit fewer women math majors so Cal could increase it women engineering majors? Or fewer women Bio majors? Or, fewer women Econ majors? Or, are you just suggesting that L&S admit fewer women Psych and English prospies, so Engineering can have more slots?
Regardless, L&S does not admit by intended major, and has not for decades. Sure it could, but then everyone would game the system, and change to Undeclared.
btw: surprised you haven’t mentioned the JuCo transfers…