Audit shows UC admission standards relaxed for out-of-staters

Parents Forum
481

MIT is 54% male enrollment and 46% female. But the admit rate at MIT for women is 13% vs. 6% for men. At Caltech: 16 percent admission rate for women, 6 percent for men. At Carnegie Mellon: 28 percent for women, 22 percent for men. Harvey Mudd: 23 percent female admission rate, 10 percent male rate.

So it looks like Prop 209 keeps Cal engineering from doing some of the things its private peer institutions are doing regarding female engineering applicants. What am I missing?

But Prop 209 overall seems to help the gals get into UCLA (56% female enrollment overall) and UCB (52%)?

482

It’s a public forum. If we want to attempt to educate some of the junior posters who don’t know as much as we do, we can. All they have to do is stop reading posts if they don’t want to learn from us .

483

That’s only if you assume its a “problem.” Clearly, UC does not; otherwise they would have solved it already. Again, UC thinks its done its educational job as long as there are plenty of Eng spaces available in Merced. (Not saying that I agree with that policy position…)

Sorry, I thought I covered that previously. In general if yield goes up overall [b[and** there is more space available, then yes, there will be more females in CoE, but not necessarily more on a % basis. But facilities are capped – Engineering labs are expensive – so increasing yield, will result in a lower admissions rate. Thus I don’t see how increasing overall yield will work to increase the number of females. If the plan is to increase the yield of females alone, then that becomes a political dance to avoid the appearance of disadvantaging guys.

One way to selectively increase yield is to encourage the Alumni Association to start providing scholarships/grants to women accpetees in the CoE to encourage them to enroll. But again, UC doesn’t see the problem, so they won’t likely be the first to suggest it to the Alums.

Yes it is, and the well-endowed schools easily offer it. Most kids (and their parents) prefer a college close to home, or at least within a day’s drive. Others, are excited to go OOS for the experience. And a significant discount from an Ivy can be very attractive.

]

As pointed out previously, statistically, these two numbers are not comparable. L&S does not admit by major. Moreover, I know plenty of future STEM kids who mark Undeclared on the app, thinking that it will give them a boost. Just assume that some/many of those Undeclared mosey on over to Comp Sci…

But even if the yield numbers are in the ballpark, without looking at the applications, we have no way of knowing if admissions is fair or not. Professor Pisani, a Stats Professor at Cal, has a whole section in his textbook on Simpson’s Paradox, and his work on gender bias in grad admissions at Cal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox

484

"So it looks like Prop 209 keeps Cal engineering from doing some of the things its private peer institutions are doing regarding female engineering applicants. "

Exactly. You’re not missing anything. Prop 209 is one of the main obstacles that prevents the UC’s from having more women in the engineering programs. Because they can’t put a finger on the admission scale for women in order to overcome lower yields, by admitting more women .

485

As a new-ish person on this forum - just wanted to say thanks to the senior posters. You guys are knowledgable and incredibly patient with responding to the frustrations of those like me who are new to college admissions. Every once in a while, there will a thread like this one (very informative and very important) that really makes me glad there is a CC. Thank you, @ucbalumnus @dstark @bluebayou @menloparkmom … others to many to name.

486

It would be fine if the senior posters were educating. Condescending and insulting is not fine. I guess we all interpret things differently. Gender Bias is a problem in my book. UC also sees it as a problem. I guess discriminating against women is okay to some. It is not okay to me or Calidad and lots of other people

487

Prop 209 has nothing to do with gender discrimination against women in engineering. When you have departments that have no women faculty or departments that create a hostile environment for women that is a significant part of the problem. That is what the research studies indicate. It used to be the same thing in medicine

488

The problem isn’t condescension. The problem is circling back over and over and not dealing with the fundamental issue that the UC system is constrained by the current regulatory environment.

Why don’t they accept more women engineers? They can’t. See 209.
Why isn’t the yield higher? Many reasons including other high end options and 209.

But women do better than men in engineering. Who cares? It’s irrelevant in the current situation.
Why do we give away cheap seats to less qualified OOS students? Not sure they really are less qualified, but the UC system is Broke with a capital B. They need the money.
Why don’t they charge more for OOS tuition and fund more spots for IS engineering kids? This is actually a great idea and I can’t think of any reason that the two highest ranked public Us are charging under market rates.

489

^^ well said. I’m glad someone else on this thread can actually see the forest for the trees and recognizes that there are multiple factors that result in the UC’s having fewer women in the engineering schools than is ideal or equitable.
Saying 209 has nothing to do with gender discrimination is like saying that rain is not wet.
uh, yeah… It IS… and it does.
We may not like the result, but there is a cause and effect relationship between 209 and how many women can and are admitted in the UC system, because admissions are gender blind. After that its up to the women themselves to decide where they want to enroll. And many factors may play into the decisions they make. And thus to the final % or yield of women who do end up enrolling in engineering at various UC campuses.

490

I think we would all agree that any bias is a problem. But there is no real data on this thread to “prove” that gender bias exists in the CoE. And without seeing the admissions files, we really can’t say if bias exists on purpose in the holistic process, or its just an unintended consequence of 209.

491

Well, I read this whole thread and… it still seems very surprising to me that the only UC Calidad’s daughter got into is UCSC. I’m not sure if it was sexism, or preference for an OOS candidate, or what. Maybe she simply slipped through the cracks. But fact is, she should have had better UC options than she did. I don’t blame him for feeling angry about it.

492

^throw in the recent additional and substantial “fingers on the scale” preferences for first generation students over students whose parents went to college by the admissions offices of UCB, UCSD, and UCLA, and you get results that defy rational explanation for many Calif residents.

493

^^and don’t forget the admission tips for low income applicants in addition to first gen.

494

often they apply to the same students…

495

@northwesty What you are missing is that our Deans, our President, our Regents, our adcoms, our students (the women and URMs at least!) and others have said repeatedly that the lack of gender and URM diversity in the UC engineering schools is hurting those schools, the programs and the students and they have committed to addressing the issue.

But, as we have seen, they have failed to address the issue.

Lots of folks want to blame 209, and of course 209 does prohibit direct action to admit more women simply because they are women. But 209 does not insist a school have an 80/20 gender split.

So, how to rectify the inequity that Dean Sastry (the UCB COE Dean) among others has committed to addressing (in 2011)?

The first, easiest and most obvious is yield.

If a women has been admitted, the 209 issue is moot. She, one must assume, got in on a “gender blind” read of her application. So, if the rest of the UC engineering programs have a similar imbalance in yield as UCB COE CS&E (50% yield for men, 30% yield for women) you could instantly increase the raw number and percentage of women by increasing yield to 50% for women. Boom - you would get 66% more women in the programs, without a bit of worry about 209.

Now, Dean Sastry in 2011 specifically was called upon, and vowed to, work on “recruitment and retention.” In other words, yield. I have not found easily accessible yield numbers for all the schools yet, but if the UCB COE CS&E numbers are true for all departments, and if we take the 2015 UC total enrollment numbers; 22000 men, 7000 women in engineering/CS. If that yield could have been bumped up across all campuses, the UC’s could have enrolled another 4000 women last year. That would also have brought the gender ration to 22000/10000 or almost a stunningly high 30%! Wow. Champagne. Fireworks.

Now, of course, adding that many women to the 9 campus engineering and CS programs will take doing. And we have been told that it is too difficult for the folks tasked with educating the next generation of engineers (to, you know, go to Mars, fix global warming, create the bionic appendage) to figure out.

So I guess we’re screwed.

496

@notveryzen But again, that is wrong. It is not that they “can’t.” They have, at various times accepted LESS women, and at other times MORE women. There is no constraint to the #. That is simply false.

They cannot USE gender as a determining factor.

So let’s stay on YIELD. The women are admitted. 209 is not a problem. Now, why are the disparities in yield so intractable as the disparities in applications and admissions? That is a question for sure.

@bluebayou You claim the UCs don’t care. The UCs state they do care. So are they lying? Because if they are lying they need to be replaced, no? I mean it’s bad enough that UCB Law Dean has to resign over sexual inappropriate behavior and the UCDavis Chancellor is under fire for clear conflict of interest and questionable admissions interference at UofI, but if the Dean and President are lying about the goals and mission for the entire university department… Well, somethings got to give, wouldn’t you say?

497

@notveryzen How does 209 impact yield? I’m not sure I see that connection.

I’m glad you like increasing OOS/International tuition. That seems like a “no-brainer.”

UMich is 43k first 2 years, 46k last 2. We are a heck of a deal compared to that - and better weather.

I would say at the very least you could increase UCB, UCLA, UCSB and UCSD engineering tuition - on location alone.

498

DS has four female friends that were accepted to Berkeley COE this year. One is going to Stanford, one is going to Michigan and two are going to MIT. He has six male friends that were accepted to the COE including 3 EECS admits. All 6 will be attending UCB. And all 6 are bitter as heck that they didn’t get into any of their top choices despite the fact that they had better objective stats than the girls for the most part. Maybe we should all be angry at the other elite schools for messing up the UC yield.

499

And for the record, I’m a UM grad and would move heaven and earth if I had to for my kids to go to UM over UCB. Sure the weather sucks but there is no such thing as an impacted major in Ann Arbor. But that’s just me.

500

@notveryzen UMich has an awesome program and seems to be doing more these days to reduce the severity of it’s gender imbalance in engineering. And their outreach is amazing - handwritten postcards from WIE member, regular emails. Local events to answer questions. A really spectacular and impressive showing. I would imagine those are the kinds of things that affect yield.

I wonder whether the UCs manage a similarly impressive, inviting and welcoming outreach for admitted students.