Being a boy?

<p>I'm about to begin (!) the college process with my son after two daughters and I've noticed that the colleges he might be considering (an average student, amazing musician), the gender ratio skews very, very heavily female -- above 65 percent in some cases. I was just wondering if in a situation where you aren't talking about the top schools in the country, whether a boy who is otherwise right in the mix stat-wise for a school might get a little bit of a tip for being a boy when that is a rarity in the population. Thoughts?</p>

<p>Maybe a little, but not so I think you’d notice. My daughter is the opposite and her (engineering) school is about 25% female. If it were down to one spot left in the program and it was between her and some boy, she would have the edge. The reality is that they admit a lot of students, males and females, with her stats so it’s not down to one spot but more like a cut off line for all students, and if you are above the line in the stats then you are in. The merit aid is all stat driven so no extras sent to her to convince her to go to that school either.</p>

<p>Depends on the school. They are always looking for diversity, but they don’t want to get it at the expense ranking related data (gpa, hs rank, etc). </p>

<p>The problem with this discussion is that all the stories we get are anecdotal. Ive never seen schools publish admissions data by gender/race/etc. If they did we could compare the % of students who applied and who were accepted. </p>

<p>The bottom line is that I wouldnt count on this happening and I wouldnt choose schools because you think it might. Just look for a good fit for your son. </p>

<p>Hi Zoosermom,
Good to hear from you.<br>
I do think a boy has an edge providing he meets the criteria for the school in the first place. I think Pomona tries to keep a 50/50 balance, and if more females apply than men, how is it logically possible that the men don’t have an advantage? They also like to have representation from most of the states, so the states with few applicants also get a special look. I think small schools take a lot of things in consideration that state schools and those who are more numbers driven do not, and gender is one of them. So, yes, I think this is the case. Good luck to your son!</p>

<p>Thanks Moonchild! I’m not looking at schools for him to have an edge, it was purely an academic question. This is my first boy and I’ve been looking with him at all sorts of stats because we’re just beginning to look, and it struck me in a big way that some of the schools he would otherwise have been interested in are very skewed. Now, I think he will get in or not get in anywhere based on auditions, so that makes it a little easier to understand, but when he applied to high schools, he was admitted to LaGuardia and declined the seat for solely demographic reasons and now we are noticing a serious skew at the college level. I was (a) curious about how schools deal with that gender imbalance and (b) looking for something of an upside for him.</p>

<p>The Common Data Set does list admission by gender, so you can look it up for many schools. There are some that refuse to publish that info though.</p>

<p>Since moonchild mentioned Pomona, I looked up their recent 2013-2014 CDS. Males admission rate was 17% vs 12% for females.</p>

<p>As the parent of boys, I have noticed that there are a few LACs where male population is significantly lower than female, such as Vassar and Connecticut College. On the Common Data set, you can see how many males applied and were accepted in recent years, and compare the acceptance rate for males vs. females. We are definitely taking a hard look at places where being a well-qualified male applicant could help.</p>

<p>Good luck to your son!</p>

<p>Oh yes, there’s an edge for boys at those gender-skewed LACs. They don’t want to be that skewed. There are plenty of schools where boys just need to be academically qualified, but girls won’t be admitted without outstanding credentials. I wouldn’t even call it a tip. It’s a different admissions standard. This is great news for interested boys!</p>

<p>Yep, it really depends on the school. For instance, Olin seems very committed to a 50/50 gender balance with the result that the admission rate is several times higher for girls than boys there. Admission rate for girls is also at least twice as high at MIT/CalTech/Mudd.</p>

<p>On the other hand, the admission rate for boys to Vasser is noticeably higher (but not at Bard, Hampshire, Oberlin, Bennington, or Sarah Lawrence; in fact, the admission rate for girls is higher at Bennington despite the skewed gender ratio there).</p>

<p>This is very interesting. I had no idea. I wonder how his perception will have changed over four years of high school. He was absolutely adamant about not going to LaGuardia because it was too female, but I wonder how he will feel about that for college.</p>

<p>Note, however, that admission rates can be misleading if the male and female applicant pools are not the same strength.</p>

<p>William and Mary is another that favors boys in admissions. Admit rate for females 27% admit rate for males 41%. </p>

<p>Note that a skewed gender ratio may actually mean that the school is not biased on gender in admissions while a 50/50 gender split may mean that they are.</p>

<p>Right, ucbalumnus. In my experience, the applicant pools are pretty lopsided, with much stronger girls.</p>

<p>Probably not. Average ususally do not get any Merit awards
I do not know about Concervatories of Music. Do not have experience with the Outstanding musician(s)</p>

<p>zm, Your comment about auditions determining his fate implies that he will be a music major, right? My son, who is the same age, will not be a music major but a huge factor will be the performing opportunites for non-majors. We’ve started thinking about the process, prompted by the need to decide whether or not he should take an SAT2 this past year after his teacher urged him to. His large HS has a huge printout summarizing the experience over the last 3 years. For each college, there is detailed information on each applicant and on outcomes. I looked at a few schools, and learned that the online information is not all that useful. Based on online data, I thought that school A might be a reach, and schools B and C matches. I found that school A is completely out of reach, school B is a safety (admission certain), and school C almost a safety (admission highly probable). I believe that your son is in a private HS? Is it large enough to have good admissions statistics? If you are going by his GPA in calling him an average student, you may find that coming from a rigorous school, his chances (based on academics) are better than you think.</p>

<p>Very hard to predict, but we certainly noticed that our kid got into Vassar while girls with better stats did not. I don’t think that it hurt that his SAT scores were in the top 25%.</p>

<p>The Vassar data is actually pretty interesting. from: <a href=“Redirect Notice”>Redirect Notice;

<p>Males:
31% of the application pool
34% admit rate
43% of the class (last year, sometimes it’s a little more, sometimes a little less)
SAT 695 CR, 697 M 692 W(averages)</p>

<p>Females:
69% of the application pool
20% admit rate
57% of the class
SAT 704 CR 679M 708W</p>

<p>So the guys are significantly better at math, but the females have slightly higher SATs overall on the 2400 scale.</p>

<p>I agree that looking at the admissions data for your school may be different than any average especially with regard to grades. And if he’s doing music auditioning all bets are off. He may be desirable for very different reasons.</p>

<p>

Because he’s God’s great gift?</p>

<p>Seriously, though, he is a good student in all of his classes except one, but the Italian grade of a C sucks his GPA right down. But the sad fact is that he does work hard and it just doesn’t click for him and probably never will. This whole conversation is my way of coming to terms with the fact that he is going to grow up and leave me, which is a huge step that I never thought I would be able to make.</p>

<p>Zoosermom, I think you’ll get more forgiveness for being bad at languages than almost anything else. My kid had a B- in Latin the last term he took it, and that was a gift. </p>

<p>It’s pretty funny that my kid ended up at a school that believes strongly that if you major in IR you need to achieve fluency in a foreign language. The only reason he got out of there alive was that he did an immersion program first semester junior year, and then spent the second half of the year solidifying the language by staying in the country. Zoosermom, I am confident you’ll be able to let him go when it’s time!</p>

<p>

I really hope so. He’s become so pleasant and such good company that even his sisters say “he’s become a real person,” which is high praise indeed!</p>

<p>I hope he gets a little forgiveness with the language. He’s improved a lot, but that’s from an earned F (gifted to a C) to an earned C. Not having language in middle school really set him back.</p>