The list below my quote shows a 7% admit rate for males vs 5% for females I do not consider this an “extreme” difference in admit rate by gender. Do you consider 7% vs 5% an “extreme” difference?
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With this example, male applicants are accepted at a rate 40% greater than female applicants.
With numbers this small, a determination would depend on the degree and direction of the rounding of the base figures.
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With numbers this small, it is probably not going to have a big impact on anything the applicant does. I do not expect a large portion of persons are going to change their mind about applying to Brown because the admit rate is 5% instead of 7% or vice versa. The difference is admit rate is likely small in comparison to other aspects of application that are more under the applicants control, such as effect of applying ED vs RD. The magnitude of difference is not large enough to suggest a boost on the level of anything traditionally considered a “hook”. It’s also much smaller than various other selective colleges on the list – 230% higher admit rate at Olin, 130% higher admit rate at Harvey Mudd, 100% higher admit rate at MIT/Caltech, which is down from ~200% higher admit rate in some previous years, etc.
I find the difference interesting for review, statistically significant, and likely reflects an actual preference by gender rather than just being correlated with other aspects of application. However, it’s not what I consider an “extreme” difference. You are welcome to feel differently.
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A statistically significant preference for one gender over another in admissions may not be 1) good policy or 2) constitutional.
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For a class size of 1,800, I wonder how many persons this actually affected at the end.
Given that it’s impossible to know the “quality” of applications between any two groups (gender just being one factor), e.g., was one group more motivated to take a “long” chance on a very high reach, vs. the other? I would never expect the admits for any group to always precisely match the proportion of applications year after year: You admit one more female, she happens to be an African American from Montana - now you have suddenly underrepresented white Montana males and people will scream “reverse discrimination” on two fronts.
Now you throw in that people fit more than one classification (gender, race, residence,…), the admit rate “gaps” within any group are unavoidable in what ultimately still is a rather small sample size, specially once you have whittled down the tens of thousands of applicants to a few thousand “candidates” based on primary (academic) selection criteria.
I can imagine that there are colleges with lasting, substantial, “systemic” imbalances - but in many cases people are trying to micro-manage a non-existing (solely statistical) problem.
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It is not a "non-existent " problem to the women who were denied admission so that less qualified men could be admitted to achieve gender balance in many cases. ( or the reverse, of course). And yes, no doubt all students admitted were qualified to some degree. The problem is surely far more significant in liberal arts colleges, where, as noted, men may have a huge admission advantage. Is gender parity an acceptable goal? How far in each direction are we willing to push that…
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Given the fact that schools like Brown can fill their classes many times over without losing quality it is a push to suggest the men they admit are less qualified. Schools of this ilk reject eminently qualified students of both genders by the thousands.
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Should gender be the decisive factor for selecting among the qualified? With 66% of their applicants female, but only around 50% of their enrolled female, it clearly is.
For the schools less selective than the Ivies, they do have to reach deeper into their pool of male app. And most still can’t get that close to parity.
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But only the application officers how big/relevant the spread of “some” might have been in any given year.
I’m suggesting that drawing conclusions by looking at any “snapshot” for any single group will yield a distorted picture due to the small number. I feel it’s necessary to follow something like a “5-year gliding average” to allow for the pendulums in various classifications to swing back and forth over time, to avoid overreacting to something that would eventually “self-correct”.
10 reds in a row at Roulette doesn’t mean the wheel is being manipulated. You’ll need a much “longer view” before you’ll get to your expected “fair share”.
Pretty sure this has been an issue for over 5 years and not a secret. It will not self correct so long as women continue to apply to college more than men.
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Although gender and race are both protected categories, they are not the same category, and a ruling on one does not automatically determine the other. If the SCOTUS determines that any determination based on gender identity is not permissible, that is an entirely new can of worms, since that would not only affect LACs and MIT, but all women and men only colleges and K-12 schools, the religious practices of about half the USA, including Catholics, Orthodox Jews, Muslims, and more. Colleges, including religious ones like Liberty would not be allowed to separate men’s and women’s dorms.
Oh, and “Bathroom Laws” would be moot, since having separate bathrooms for men and women be deemed unconstitutional.
I’m not saying whether I think that this is good or bad, I’m saying that, if SCOTUS determines that it is illegal to base any determination for admissions on gender, that doesn’t only mean college admissions, but admissions to any school, and place of worship, or any public or private space. It means admissions to any institution of higher education, including seminaries and other religious educational institutions. After all, it has already been determined that one cannot determine admission to these based on race.
The fact that single-gender schools still exist, years after schools were banned from race-based segregation, indicates that the law sees gender and race as being qualitatively different.
So no, no matter what SCOTUS rules on race-related admissions, it does not automatically determine whether gender-based admissions policies are constitutional.
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No, the categories of race and gender are separate under constitutional analysis so a ruling on race would not directly impact gender. But expect that to be the next litigation; colleges will need to show a substantial public interest (or equally substantial opposing interest, like religious freedom) justifies using the factor in admissions. One can make that case more easily at single gender schools than coed schools.
Nothing regarding admission decisions impacts bathroom or dorm life, just fyi
The admissions pool at the “highly rejective” colleges is huge and deep. No need to consider gender.
Admit 30 students next year who achieved a serious level in ballet. No consideration of gender. Odds are that 25 of them are female. Admit 50 students next year who were double threats at both hockey and lacrosse. You’ll get 45 men. And this is without considering gender or having to compromise on academic qualifications one iota.
You cannot imagine the depth and breadth of the applicant pool at some of these places. You can do eeny meeny miney moe on a particular EC and get a flood.
Brown has made the strategic decision to focus resources on First Gen students. It requires both commitment and money- special advisors to help kids once they are on campus, more money in need based aid; etc. If that has meant a modest imbalance gender wise then it is what it is. You can’t pursue 30 admissions priorities simultaneously and keep your academic standards where you want them to be.
Gender parity impacts the educational, social, and psychological environment on campus, and it also impacts the marketability and desirability of the school to certain students, so why wouldn’t it be?
You’ve repeatedly indicated in this thread that this may be decided in June, even though the gender question is not even before the court. That result is extremely unlikely. If it is the subject of the next litigation that’d be a much longer timetable.
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Here’s an article by the Chronicle about the male enrollment crisis (they termed it a crisis):
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From the study I’ve seen, minorities had a big increase in applications across top colleges due to test optionality.
And minorities who apply to top schools are disproportionately female - 60% of African-American applicants to Harvard were women.
So that could explain why the numbers of females went up so significantly across the Ivy League.
That + women are probably more likely to go to college in the first place so it makes sense that when you remove a barrier, it disproportionately will impact women as more women go to college.
But this is still surprising to me. Because it tells me there’s a lot of kids applying who wouldn’t be applying if tests were re-introduced.
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The higher rate of women applying test optional is not only due to correlations with being a minority. Women average higher grades than men at every education level from elementary school to college. However, women do not average higher combined test scores than men. This makes test scores more likely to be a relative weak point and barrier in applications for women, so women are more likely to apply test optional
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