<p>When I look at the naviance data from my kid’s school, I see a diffence between Uva and W&M. At UVa the pattern is very regular, with most applicants above a certain GPA getting in, and most below not getting in. At W&M the pattern is much less clear. What to make of this? The obvious answer is that aspects besides GPA and SAT matter more at W&M than at UVa. Putting more weight on other factors is a two-edged sword. It provides a more complete picture of the applicant, allowing for a better “fit,” but it can also be used to limit demographic groups. Requirements such as essays, letters of recommendation, and interviews came to prominence in the 1920s as a way to alter the demographics at Ivy league institutions ( [gladwell</a> dot com - getting in](<a href=“http://www.gladwell.com/2005/2005_10_10_a_admissions.html]gladwell”>http://www.gladwell.com/2005/2005_10_10_a_admissions.html) ).</p>
<p>Standrews, of course one could just as easily ask why the school isn’t doing more to encourage male applicants. In fact, I suggested earlier that that’s exactly what it SHOULD be doing instead of discriminating against girls. Also, btw, there’s really no clear trend of boys turning down William and Mary more than girls do. There was a fairly big difference in yield this year (37 percent of girls accepted the offer versus only 32.5 percent of the boys), but in the two years before that the difference was negligible.</p>
<p>The Kenyon link is interesting because – unlike William and Mary – they’re at least being frank. It’s also not a state school. Note also that Kenyon does not have nearly the discrepency that William and Mary does.</p>
<p>Coase, does the naviance from your kid’s school report gender? I’m betting that if it does you’ll find more boys being admitted with lower GPAs than girls. This would be consistent with the general view of nova high school guidance counselers, who routinely advise boys, but not girls, that William and Mary will overlook blemishes in the high school record if the SATs are good.</p>
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Okay, I see what you’re getting at. To me, it’s discrimination when a college says, “Female? Nope!” exclusive of any other consideration. “2050 SATs, white female, Fairfax county? No way.” I just don’t see it as discrimination when a college sets up a complex system of evaluation that takes into account both objective and subjective factors in an effort to compose a class in keeping with the school’s culture. I’ve often mentioned on “chances” threads here that W & M likes male applicants. But it likes applicants from big square states, underrepresented minority groups, and certain athletic endeavors, orchestral sections, and prospective majors, as well. It’s easier for an OOS applicant from Montana to be accepted than one from New Jersey. I don’t think that’s discrimination.</p>
<p>Your first post posed it as a question, but your subsequent posts indicate that you’ve decided that W & M is indeed practicing gender discrimination in admissions. So how can the problem be solved? You mention the creation of programs of particular interest to male students - that’s a good idea, but not one that’s going to happen soon, given the economic realities at the College. If we could wave a magic wand and require W & M to do a gender-blind reading of all applications, what if the College admitted a class that was 80 or even 90 percent female? I suggest that this would not serve the College, its students, nor the state well; that yield would certainly decrease; and that the quality of the student body would eventually decrease as well, because few students will choose a coed institution with such a lopsided student body.
Of course not. But I don’t understand your implication, in posts 14 and 18, that rejected applicants are not “serious” or not “smart.” The reality is that smart, serious students are often rejected at selective institutions. Which is why we call them selective.</p>
<p>This article by Kenyon’s dean of admissions touches on many of the issues being discussed here, even though it’s a few years old.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/23/opinion/23britz.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/23/opinion/23britz.html</a></p>
<p>I only used Harvard as an example of people applying who have no shot at gaining admissions.</p>
<p>you have continually argued that W&M should accept the same percentage of the female applicant pool as the male applicant pool. My question to you is: why?</p>
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Remember that correlation does not equal causation! :)</p>
<p>Naviance is a nice tool, but it only shows that we’re consistent when it comes to GPA and SAT. That doesn’t mean we aren’t consistent when it comes to other factors. Top students often show strength in the subjective areas of the application as well.</p>
<p>Soccerguy, I’m not arguing that the rates should be the same. I’m only arguing that the rates are SO different, and so consistently different, that some sort of explanation from the college would be nice. We are talking about a state school, after all.</p>
<p>Dean J, you make a very good point. UVA consistently requires strong grades and test scores. William and Mary apparently does not – at least not when you’re a boy.</p>
<p>Frazzled, you are again failing to back up your arguments with real numbers. Show me real numbers pointing to Fairfax kids getting pushed aside in favor of rural kids or box state kids. As for “serving the state well,” it seems to me that every other major William and Mary competitor is managing to “serve the state” just fine without shunning women.</p>
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<p>Dean J, since you have stressed that UVa takes high school performance very seriously, I am comfortable in concluding that high school GPA is such a good predictor of acceptance because it is the cause, and not because it is correlated with the “real” cause (be it essays or letters of recommendation). That is not to say that the other factors are irrelevant; rather, the question is how often those other factors are dispositive. If a school put no weight on factors other than GPA and SAT, the naviance scattergram would divide applicants into two distinct regions. As more weight is put on other factors, the scattergram will become less regular, with some people being rejected despite having both higher GPAs and higher SAT scores than some admits. How “irregular” the scattergram looks depends on how much weight is put on these other factors and how highly correlated they are with GPA and SAT scores. The greater the weight and the lower the correlation, the more irregular the plot becomes. UVa’s looks regular; W&M’s does not. I still think that the obvious (i.e., most likely) answer is that W&M is putting more weight on those other factors. What are the alternative explanations? If the same kids are applying to UVa and W&M from a given high school, the correlations mentioned above should be similar. I also doubt that the pattern is the result of W&M’s admissions officers being inconsistent in their judgment from day to day.</p>
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I"m not trying to back up my “arguments” with numbers - I didn’t realize that was the assignment. I think we define “discriminate” differently (though now you’ve moved on to “shun”). I’ve stated that I don’t consider it discrimination unless a female applicant is rejected simply because she is female, or if a male applicant is accepted instead simply because he is male. Considering that W & M receives many more qualified applications each year than it has slots, and that the school has an interest in fielding a class in which there is diversity of background, interests, and, yes, gender, I don’t see how the numbers “prove” that admissions discriminates against women. </p>
<p>W & M does not “shun” women, as might be inferred by your own numbers, which demonstrate that more women than men are accepted at W & M, or by the CDS numbers, which demonstrate that more women than men enroll year after year. How is that “shunning”? If you have an instate daughter who’ll be applying this year or in the future, she has a strong chance at being admitted if she’s a strong applicant. Stronger than the chances my daughters faced, certainly, as OOS applicants from NY. Had they been rejected, we’d have been disappointed, but wouldn’t have thought the reason was that they’d been discriminated against. We’d have thought there were applicants who offered the College more of what it needed to build that year’s class. My oldest d was a Monroe Scholar at W & M but waitlisted at UVA - obviously UVA was looking for something she wasn’t that year. (She applied as a girl at each school, though. :))</p>
<p>You’re obviously convinced that discrimination against girl applicants exists. How would you like to see the problem solved? And is there a realistic way of doing so? If you feel the College is engaging in illegal discrimination, you could follow up with the appropriate authorities. You could discourage any female offspring from applying on the grounds that the school discriminates against women. Btw, I’ve asked each of my kids who attended this question in the last two days, and neither of them felt discriminated against as students - nor do they feel they faced unfair evaluation as female applicants. Neither would have chosen a school that was 80 percent one gender or the other, either, so perhaps they’re guilty of discrimination as well.</p>
<p>Frazzled, I’ve never suggested that ENROLLED female students are being discriminated against at William and Mary. All I’ve suggested is that girls are being discriminated against in ADMISSIONS. I don’t think this has anything to do with the school not liking women or being mean to women once they’re enrolled, and everything to do with the school simply wanting as evenly balanced a class by gender as possible in the face of an overwhelmingly female applicant pool. And I happen to think that the fair way to do this is to come up with programs that attract more men rather than hide behind an amorphous, so-called “holistic,” admissions policy that, despite purporting to take into account each student’s individual attributes beyond grades and test scores, still magically leads, year after year after year, to grossly disproportionate numbers of women being denied admissions. </p>
<p>As for your Monroe scholar not getting into UVA despite being a girl, you are from out of state, where admission to UVA is harder than William and Mary regardless of gender. Admission to William and Mary, on the other hand, is harder in state than UVA – but, mind you, ONLY if you’re a girl.</p>
<p>Finally, that your girls wouldn’t have wanted to go to William and Mary if it had more girls carries no weight with me. That’s no different than saying they wouldn’t want to go to a school that had too many minorities. Either proposition may be true, but neither justifies discrimination.</p>
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Oh, my. It certainly seems quite a bit different to me. (I don’t quite see the comparison, anyway. Women aren’t a minority - which seems to be your point.) And, whether it carries any weight with you or not, I’d like to point out that I said my daughters would not have chosen W & M had it been 80 percent female or 80 percent male. They’re apparently the kind of student the school has in mind in striving to compose a diverse student body. </p>
<p>I can see that I’m not making my point with you (and you’re not making yours with me either, but it’s your thread). Had I realized that your initial post wasn’t really a question, I wouldn’t have responded. But before signing out, can I suggest that the word “shun” was kind of … overkill? This, too:
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<p>Is there any data that supports the claim that the boys admitted to W&M are less qualified than the girls? I certainly have no seen it on campus.</p>
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<p>lol</p>
<p>those stupid boys, dragging down W&M’s reputation. I’m still waiting for the stats that prove your accusations.</p>
<p>Frazzled, my point isn’t that women are minorities, it’s that women are being discriminated against because of a physical attribute - their gender - which isn’t right whether they are minorities or not. And, Soccerguy, I can’t provide the stats because, unlike Kenyon, William and Mary hasn’t released them. Wonder why that is?</p>
<p>Well, here’s an argument that has a lot to do with me. Being a girl from Fairfax County, I’d like to put in my two cents. </p>
<p>Yeah, it’s harder for girls to get in. And, yeah, a higher percentage of boys than girls are accepted. Bear in mind, though, that it is a liberal arts school, and (traditionally) more girls apply to LACs than boys (Think Swarthmore. Check out THOSE stats). Do I think it’s “discrimination”? Nope. Because I know that if I applied to an engineering school, I’d have an easier time getting in than if I were male. It’s just how things work. (Now I’m wondering if there’s a thread with a parent complaining about, say, MIT being biased against boys. I’ve heard that MIT’s admission rate for boys is 13% and for girls is 30%)</p>
<p>Is it fair? Maybe not. </p>
<p>I mean, coming from this region, I get what you’re saying, novaparent. But William and Mary is a state school. They do have certain quotas for admission by region - why not by gender as well? I don’t think it’s that girls are being held to higher standards, but rather that everyone is held to the same standards, and there are more girls who meet those standards simply because there are more girl applicants. </p>
<p>Anyway, since you probably have a daughter applying to W&M, I wish her the best of luck.</p>
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<p>This is why the question “Does W&M discriminate against girls?” has proved a tempest in a tea pot. If you are making this claim, which you seem to be, then you need data to support it. It’s a big leap to prove that a difference in admission rates constitutes discrimination. It’s a bigger leap to suggest that lack of data from W&M constitutes a cover up or conspiracy, which is exactly what your “wonder why that is?” question implies.</p>
<p>Is it harder for women to gain admission? Very probably so. Let’s leave it at that.</p>
<p>Here’s the thing, folks, everyone keeps talking about the need for data but I’m the ONLY one who is in fact offering ANY: the data that is freely available on the common data set, which shows that year after year after year William and Mary admits a much higher percentage of boys than girls and is the ONLY selective state school in its region – check out UNC, U-Va, JMU, St. Mary’s of Maryland, and Mary Washington – that does this. </p>
<p>Drama-songbird hasn’t offered any DATA to support her view that there are regional quotas – which, for the record, William and Mary denies – nor do you, standrews, offer any data to support your view. </p>
<p>And, not that it should matter, but I don’t have a daughter (or a son, for that matter) applying to William and Mary this year. I’ve had kids apply in past years, including one (a daughter) who got in but went elsewhere. William and Mary was not a top choice for any of my kids, but it has been for some of their female friends, and it was disappointing to see their applications denied while less qualified boys in their classes were offered admission. As a state resident I have an interest in admissions to our state colleges being fair, which in my view means, among other things, being gender-blind. </p>
<p>These are the facts, supported by DATA:</p>
<ol>
<li> William and Mary has nearly twice as many female applicants as male.</li>
<li> William and Mary shares many cross applicants with U-Va, UNC, St. Mary’s, Mary Washington, and JMU.</li>
<li> Each of these other schools also has many more female applicants than males.</li>
<li> Every one of these schools practices “holistic admission,” meaning that each takes into account attributes other than grades, courses, and test scores.<br></li>
<li> Each of these other schools admits females at numbers that are proportionate to the number of female applications.</li>
<li> In contrast, year after year after year, William and Mary’s admission rate for boys is in the 40s, while for girls it’s in the 20s.</li>
<li> The most logical reading of this data is that, other than William and Mary, none of these schools considers gender to be a major factor in their holistic admissions policies.<br></li>
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<p>So, standrews, here’s the question. If you agree with drama-songbird that William and Mary has regional quotas even though William and Mary denies it, then why are you so quick to take take the school at its word that it’s not holding women to a higher standard when there’s actual – and strong – data to support it?</p>
<p>U-Va is on record that it does not take gender into account in its admissions decisions. Dean J has made this clear on the U-Va board, and U-Va’s data supports this. Why hasn’t the William and Mary admissions rep on this board piped in on the issue?</p>
<p>Correct me if I am wrong, but this entire thread makes absolutely no sense if none of your kids are even applying to WM this year.</p>
<p>This is just some ridiculous argument that is never going to be resolved.</p>
<p>I really don’t understand what the point of starting this even was.</p>
<p>This is college admissions, not a conspiracy - and anyone who think it is can just not apply to WM. Problem solved.</p>
<p>Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know that you are only allowed to have an opinion on college admissions, discrimination, and the fairness of your state institutions if you have a child applying to a particular college in a certain year.</p>
<p>The point of this thread is that I have a concern that William and Mary treats girls unfairly based on the available data. It’s a free country and an open forum and I have the right to express my opinion as long as I abide by CC’s rules. If you don’t like what I’m saying or don’t think I have a right to express my opinion, then ignore me and go to another thread. </p>
<p>Anyway, here’s a link to an interesting article on the very issue that I’ve been discussing that specifically mentions William and Mary and sheds light on why we haven’t seen a lot of lawsuits about this, either at William and Mary or elsewhere. I guess we should just tell the author to bug off unless his kid’s applying to college this year?</p>
<p><a href=“whyboysfail.com”>whyboysfail.com;
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You are wrong. Whether the thread “makes sense” is independent of whether one has a child applying. (As it happens, I do have a child applying, but this issue is moot for her.) Even if you feel that participating in the thread only makes sense for such people, you are again wrong. For starters, all VA taxpayers have a stake in W&M. </p>
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It is hardly ridiculous to debate the merits of preferences (IS vs. OOS, legacy, URM, athletes, etc.). If there is one thing that higher education should do, it is to foster thoughtful debate. As for the basic question of whether W&M has higher standards for girls, that cannot be answered with existing public data, and would probably not be resolved even if W&M published GPA and SAT data by sex. So, I actually agree with that part. </p>
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I am 100% certain that this is a true statement. </p>
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Walking away from something that one perceives as a problem does not solve it. I sincerely doubt that this is an ethos that W&M wants to espouse. </p>
<p>I also want to comment on the analogy to MIT’s acceptance rate of girls. If someone has data on the relative qualifications of girls and boys who are admitted that would be useful. But there may be one big difference between the two situations. (It is not a legal or moral difference.) A female engineer once mentioned to me that when she was an undergrad in mechanical engineering at a top school, most of the girls in the program were at the top of the class. Her explanation was simple: it was not worth going through the program if you weren’t really good. In other words, there was an elelment of self-selection. Simply looking at acceptance rates at that point would have been misleading because the applicant pools were qualitatively different.</p>