<p>@CatalanNumbers (post #848) Are you aware that the acceptance rate for women at Caltech is 20%, while for men it is 9%? In addition when asked what they consider under “Non-academic”, EC’s and character are “Important”, Talent/ability, First generation, race, volunteer and work experience and legacy are all “considered”. I wouldn’t say that’s a non-holistic admissions process though I do think Caltech may weigh academics a bit more than other similar colleges. I think the large Asian population probably reflects the application pool. (STEM school in California)</p>
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Do we see the similar “trend” at MIT? At the high school my child attended more than a decade ago, I saw this kind of trend at that time.</p>
<p>For my whole life, I have been working at companies where their employees are mostly STEM majors in college. There are so few female employees, except possibly in the HR or finance departments.</p>
<p>One of my previous colleagues even told me that he thinks it is generally easier for a female engineer to find a job (I am not sure if he is “sour grape” or not, but in this case, 3 female ex-employees quickly found jobs at a tier-one companies like Apple, Qualcomm, etc., while several male ex-employees had to “settle” at another lower-tier companies where the overall benefits are not as great. To be sure, those female ones are younger - e.g., either not married yet or having preschool age kids, but the male ones are no longer in their prime age, say, having kids in high school or college. In this industry, the reality is that the younger, the better, in general. It was still somewhat “unsettling” to see that, with one exception, the other two female ex-employees were like “trainees” by these more experienced male engineers previously. Maybe those female ex-employees were trained well enough (for their age) by these much more experienced male engineers while they were working for our company. But this topic is tangent to this thread.)</p>
<p>“For my whole life, I have been working at companies where their employees are mostly STEM majors in college. There are so few female employees, except possibly in the HR or finance departments.”</p>
<p>That’s so bizarre - what a dated time warp! Hopefully you realize this. </p>
<p>When I worked for a large (household name) company, we had a female CEO - I worked directly for her at one point. (She went to a top 20 southern u and had an MBA from a top 20 Midwestern u! Imagine that!). She and several other women I worked with or for routinely made Forbes or Fortune lists of influential businesswomen. </p>
<p>My company now is a small boutique firm, one of the largest woman-owned in our state. </p>
<p>Yes, I belong to an older generation.</p>
<p>When I was in college, there were about 120 students in the EE department in my year. We had a single female student. (BTW, she was extremely good academically.)</p>
<p>On Caltech, I do not want to derail the discussion, but it has had as low as 1% African American students. To me that’s prime evidence that they do not consider race. MIT has ~45% females, Caltech has ~30%. That’s another point of reference that they likely do not weigh by gender. In fact, a very bright young woman from my circle recently got into both MIT and Caltech, and went to Caltech because she felt more secure that she got in due to her credentials, and not because she was female. However, all this is secondary evidence, and unless someone sits in their admissions committee and is willing disclose cofidential discussions we would never know.</p>
<p>But that is tangential to my point. I believe in an admissions criteria that considers nothing but academics (not APs, not SATs, just core academic competency in high school curriculum). I also believe in a society where all races, al genders, all SES are equally proficient in such high school curriculum. That was my point.</p>
<p>PG: your experience isn’t universal. I know recent female graduates in various fields who are in the distinct gender minority in their work environments. As you point out, an excellent way to solve the problem is for women to start their own companies, when in the position to do so.</p>
<p>ETA women owned companies can also help with the issue of continuing pay disparity</p>
<p>“Some of the alleged advantages of elite private schools have to do with networking.”</p>
<p>By elite private schools, I am assuming that you mean elite colleges. </p>
<p>I am not sure whether networking helps. It probably does, but I have never leveraged any networks. It is easy enough to succeed in the USA based purely on competence. However, to me, the key advantage of an elite college, or university, is the sheer brilliance of the peer group that forces all students to excel more than they would otherwise have aimed for.</p>
<p>“I believe in an admissions criteria that considers nothing but academics (not APs, not SATs, just core academic competency in high school curriculum). I also believe in a society where all races, al genders, all SES are equally proficient in such high school curriculum. That was my point.”</p>
<p>The failing school systems in many urban areas (including but not limited to the NE) must really bother you – all that potential wasted. </p>
<p>"Yes, I belong to an older generation.</p>
<p>When I was in college, there were about 120 students in the EE department in my year. We had a single female student. (BTW, she was extremely good academically.)"</p>
<p>How old are you? I’m almost 50. I went to a school with a strong engineering dept (though I wasn’t one). There were certainly plenty of female engineers. It wasn’t even notable. I don’t know what the gender breakout was or is, though. </p>
<p>I am not sure whether networking helps. It probably does, but I have never leveraged any networks. It is easy enough to succeed in the USA based purely on competence. However, to me, the key advantage of an elite college, or university, is the sheer brilliance of the peer group that forces all students to excel more than they would otherwise have aimed for.</p>
<p>If we are going to agree potential for academic high achievement is spread evenly throughout the population, I think the “sheer brilliance” is primarily the knowledge and sophistication acquired by being raised in an enriched educaitonal background. That is why i asked about SAT, which seems to me to measure primarily enriched background.</p>
<p>I am more than a decade older. (Looking forward to the time when I will be qualified for Medicaid after having contributed to it for more than 30 years.)</p>
<p>To put it in this way: I belong to the generation whose only exposure to computer languages is FORTRAN and the professor still insisted we should learn vacuum tube electronic circuits. (Also, I am a first generation immigrant and had my UG degree in another country so it might be even more “out-dated” there. But when I did my grad school work at a UC in US, I think there were still very few female engineering students.)</p>
<p>BTW, I personally think there must be more female engineering talents there. After all, about a half of the population are female. It is a pity that so few females go into this field.</p>
<p>* It is easy enough to succeed in the USA based purely on competence. *</p>
<p>CatalanNumbers: On this particular point, I emphatically disagree with you.</p>
<p>I keep saying to myself, avoid this thread!!! but Catalan, you get to me. I don’t know where you get your misguided info on Caltech, but it is certainly not from their newspaper. They have reported how they lose the URMs to other schools. The URMs that are accepted to Caltech get acceptances elsewhere. This issue was discussed at a Parents’ Weekend, too.</p>
<p>Both Caltech and MIT have reported admissions given to females, but compare the credentials. The females self select. They are not inferior candidates. It has also been 10 years since Caltech had @30% females. This year it was 36.6%. It has been higher.</p>
<p>There is a poster on this forum who proclaims frequently that excelling in school is dependent mostly on doing all ones homework every night. Right.</p>
<p>My daughter has an engineering degree that she got in 2010. The vast vast majority if the engineering students at her school were male. </p>
<p>My husband works as an engineer. At this point, in a 110 engineer company there are less than 5. And I just asked him…and he says that his company is a little low, but not by much. He says about 10% or less of consulting engineers (EE, CE, ME) are female. </p>
<p>alh, Please allow me to rephrase then. Once someone has graduated from an elite college with high academic honors, it is easy enough to succeed in the USA without having to leverage any network. This is what I meant.</p>
<p>Bookworm, I regret using Caltech’s name in vain. Let’s just say that regardless of what Caltech does, I prefer an admissions system that doesn’t handicap by demographics.</p>
<p>The “debate” about nature vs nurture is not easy to be settled. After all, it cost the previous president at Harvard his job! It is a touchy issue.</p>
<p>Re: SES and “waste of potentials of inner city students”, I do think those from a lower SES family receive the shorter end of education and most of them are not given their “fair” share of opportunity just because they were born into such a family (and, and it could be not PC here, born with such skin color.)</p>
<p>If my child was thrown into such a mess-up school system for his primary and secondary education, I am not sure where he would be today!</p>
<p>My child was in the non-inner-city public school system all the way before college. (because we could not afford it when he was growing up – and we need to save for his college education also. We kept trying to move to a “better” public school district as our family finance was improved over the years.) Occasionally, I still wonder whether he might have had somewhat inferior education when he was at primary and secondary education level. My educated guess: in term of the “disparity” of the educational quality between privates and publics: secondary education > college > post-college. But I do not have any evidence to back this up.</p>
<p>alh, I think SAT is a completely meaningless exam, as are its cousins GRE and GMAT. It’s an exam that can be gamed, and tests nothing of academic consequence. If I were to run my own elite private college, I wouldn’t use SAT. I would give my own admissions test in academic subjects which wouldn’t be multiple choice either. I would test for problem solving and thinking skills, and the approach to the solution than the solution itself. Essentially, I would test if the incoming kids show potential as problem solvers to problems that are not yet solved, and not whether they know English grammar and basic algebra.</p>
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<p>The first paragraph does not say anything about how Caltech does admissions, though. I never went to a parent’s weekend for Caltech, but I’ve heard from undergrads who worked in admissions that they didn’t have affirmative action, (which seems to contradict the common data set). It looks like you were contesting the point that the URM demographic is low at Caltech because they admit by academics alone, but I don’t see Catalan making that point. </p>
<p>Pizzagirl, Yes, the failing school districts in low SES regions (rural and urban, NE and outside) do bother me a lot. We talked a lot about provincialism on this thread. The most pernicious provincialism is letting local funding drive K-12 education which leads to this aforementioned failure.</p>