female vs male standards for admission

Parents Forum
41

<p>Yes. That IS the point. There are more women competing for college slots because,as a percentage of the population, more women are going to college than men, at this point. I will look for the article, but there was recently a published account of the fact that women are earning the BA’s, BS’s, and going on to graduate school at a much higher rate than men are.</p>

<p>I don’t think this is good for the women or the men in our culture, personally. JMO.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.newsweek.com/2010/09/15/women-earn-most-doctorates-but-find-colleges-not-family-friendly.html[/url]”>http://www.newsweek.com/2010/09/15/women-earn-most-doctorates-but-find-colleges-not-family-friendly.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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42

<p>As a little bit of an echo of what’s been said, take a look at the gender distribution for a university that has a college of arts and sciences (or the like), and you’ll probably find that the college is majority female. This isn’t just happening at LACs.</p>

43

<p>@saintsaens: that’s not true. at least, not for the top universities. at the top 20 universities, it is highly likely that the ratio is 50/50 or very close to it, unless of course we’re talking about tech schools like MIT and caltech, where males are the clear majority. </p>

<p>for instance, cornell has a CAS, but the ratio is 50/50 flat. like most other top colleges btw</p>

<p>in fact, i just collegesearch’ed the top 20 universities and most actually had male majorities, albeit very slight majorities. some, like caltech, MIT, carnegie mellon, and WashU, were >55/45 in favor of males. i bet (although i can’t be sure) most of these schools have a CAS too</p>

44

<p>But poet… While I think that’s the more interesting discussion, the OP if I remember correctly was suggesting that schools are lowering standards to admit men, when I don’t think it’s about standards as much as numbers (as your article suggests).</p>

45

<p>Look, if only 40% of the applicants to college are male, and you are attempting to get an equal distribution, and you are not a top 10-25 school, you are going to be admitting a lower stat boy than girl. Just by virtue of going lower down the list…faster.</p>

<p>I wish it were 52-48% applying, given that I believe that is the general pop. distribution. It isn’t any better for women to have to choose from a less educated demographic for a partner than it is to be a part of that less educated demographic. JMO</p>

46

<p>“It isn’t any better for women to have to choose from a less educated demographic for a partner than it is to be a part of that less educated demographic.”</p>

<p>You know that I have at least one of your daughters reserved for marriage (so much for free will) to one of my sons, and I promise they will be highly educated AND do the dishes. I do apologize for the lack of skill in the cooking department :(</p>

<p>Anyone have any ideas about some great top schools to look into, where a white male might have a bit of an advantage? Not talking ivy league, as his grades/SAT are not top notch, but will be pretty decent. He’ll be full pay too, if that helps. There are so many schools, it’s overwhelming. And if I’m going to have to pay 50K+ per year for a school, it should be pretty amazing.</p>

47

<p>Busdriver! Hi. :)</p>

<p>I’d start a thread on the subject. I’d like your youngest to have the strongest educational background available. Thank you. ;)</p>

<p>No, seriously, they usually come up with some pretty good lists on those threads.</p>

48

<p>

Wuchu, I think saintsaens was referring to the colleges which are within the universities rather than the U as a whole. Many big universities have separate “colleges” like the College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Engineering, etc.</p>

49

<p>@sylvan: i just read his post again, and i think you’re right. my bad =]</p>

<p>but that really doesn’t change anything. in fact…
at cornell, CAS applicants are 52% female. for CoE, females make up 24% of the applicants. there is clearly a greater disparity in the latter</p>

<p>i just looked up data on cornell’s acceptance rates for individual colleges.</p>

<p>College of engineering # of applicants: 6348 males, 2060 females. acceptance rate: 17% for men, 34% for women.</p>

<p>college of arts and sciences # of applicants: 8234 males, 8936 females.
acceptance rate: 16% for men, 15% for women.</p>

<p>i’d say that, at least at cornell, there are far less women who want to become engineers than men who want to join CAS, and that women benefit a lot more because of this</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.dpb.cornell.edu/documents/1000003.pdf[/url]”>http://www.dpb.cornell.edu/documents/1000003.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>my conclusion is that, at universities with both a CAS and a CoE, women benefit far more than men, for the disparity in CAS applicants cannot even compare to that in CoE applicants, where females might not even make up a quarter. the measly 1 or 2 percentage points that men have in CAS is more than canceled out by the doubling in the acceptance rate of females as compared to males for CoE.</p>

<p>(i’m extrapolating cornell’s data to other universities, but i feel like what i just said is generally true)</p>

50

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<p>More boys are born in the US than girls in every year, and there was nothing special about 1989. There is a slight long term decline in the proportion of boys born though. Not enough to influence college acceptances to any meaningful degree.</p>

51

<p>As a mother of both boys and a girl, the bottom line is that boys and girls are very different and should be treated differently. I am a pharmacist. I have a lot of friends who are physicians. A lot of women want to be doctors and do very well in college and go on to prestigious med schools and do very well. But then they get married and want to be a mom and don’t want to work 80 hours a week like a lot of doctors do so they go into fields like radiology, endocrinology, anesthesiology, dermatology, etc… Maybe if we don’t treat the boys differently we don’t end up with neurosurgeons, spinal surgeons, etc… Just a thought.</p>

52

<p>tx5athome, this is a little off topic, but perhaps the answer is to have spinal surgery jobs that don’t require 80-hr weeks, rather than to skew college admissions to ensure more males get in and eventually take those jobs. There is nothing about surgery relative to other specialties that requires that schedule, and frankly I’d rather not be operated on by someone on hour 78 of their work week. I think that as more hands-on parents of both genders enter supervisory roles in medicine and other professions, we’ll see schedule flexibility that allows women who want to spend part of their lives on childrearing to still do the jobs that are currently quite unfriendly to that.</p>

53

<p>Stacy I agree with you and hope you are right. But, I do have quite a few friends who are pharmacists, physicians, attorneys, dentists, etc… who have chosen not to work at all, but instead focus on being a mom. Absolutely that is a valid choice but you don’t see too many men, with that level of education, doing the same thing.</p>

54

<p>Perhaps fewer men are graduating at 22 because fewer are starting at 18 – because they’re still in high school at 18, having “waited a year” to start K. Redshirting has effects on both ends of the educational time line.</p>

55

<p>tx5athome - I have hired 3 women whose husbands had to put their jobs in the back burner in order for those women to do their jobs. It is happening more and more often.</p>

56

<p>Some more numbers calculated from the latest CDS’s (some 10-11, some 09-10, a few older). Sorted by Male Advantage: the multiplier of Male admit rate greater (or less than) Female Admit rate.</p>

<p>This is an assortment of top LACs and National U’s, excluding all-women’s schools, service academies, and schools that don’t post a CDS, like Columbia,Washington U, Rice, Chicago, Georgetown, Boston C, Tufts, Occidental, & USC.</p>

<p>Male Advantage – SCHOOL – MALE admit rate – FEMALE admit rate
0.74 – Vassar – 35.1% – 20.2%
0.45 – William & Mary – 39.4% – 27.2%
0.44 – Pomona – 18.2% – 12.6%
0.35 – Brown – 13.2% – 9.8%
0.31 – Swarthmore – 18.8% – 14.3%
0.28 – Yale – 8.6% – 6.7%
0.27 – Bowdoin – 22.0% – 17.3%
0.22 – Wesleyan – 23.0% – 18.8%
0.22 – Middlebury – 19.2% – 15.8%
0.20 – Vanderbilt – 19.7% – 16.4%
0.19 – GW – 40.5% – 34.0%
0.17 – Holy Cross – 39.5% – 33.7%
0.16 – Amherst – 17.3% – 14.9%
0.15 – Pitzer – 22.2% – 19.3%
0.14 – Northwestern – 29.1% – 25.5%
0.13 – Davidson – 27.9% – 24.6%
0.11 – W&L – 20.0% – 18.0%
0.10 – Carleton – 32.4% – 29.5%
0.09 – Dartmouth – 12.2% – 11.2%
0.09 – Richmond – 34.6% – 31.8%
0.09 – Claremont McK – 18.9% – 17.4%
0.08 – Notre Dame – 29.7% – 27.6%
0.07 – Wake – 39.0% – 36.3%
0.07 – Williams – 21.2% – 19.8%
0.06 – Stanford – 7.5% – 7.1%
0.05 – UNC – 32.6% – 31.0%
0.04 – Haverford – 26.6% – 25.5%
0.04 – Kenyon – 40.2% – 38.7%
0.04 – JHU – 27.2% – 26.2%
0.04 – Duke – 19.3% – 18.6%
0.03 – St Olaf – 58.2% – 56.5%
0.02 – Emory – 30.1% – 29.4%
0.02 – Oberlin – 31.0% – 30.3%
0.01 – Grinnell – 43.4% – 42.9%
0.01 – Hamilton – 29.6% – 29.3%
0.00 – Purdue – 65.2% – 65.0%
(0.00) – Sewanee – 63.8% – 63.9%
(0.01) – Harvard – 7.9% – 8.0%
(0.02) – Ohio State – 68.2% – 69.4%
(0.02) – Bates – 26.6% – 27.2%
(0.02) – Princeton – 8.7% – 8.9%
(0.02) – UCLA – 21.6% – 22.1%
(0.02) – U Minn – 47.2% – 48.4%
(0.03) – GaTech – 58.2% – 59.9%
(0.03) – Macalester – 41.8% – 43.1%
(0.03) – Rhodes – 44.5% – 46.1%
(0.05) – Reed – 41.5% – 43.5%
(0.05) – Col Col – 32.7% – 34.3%
(0.05) – Colgate – 32.0% – 33.8%
(0.06) – NYU – 31.0% – 32.9%
(0.06) – U Ill – 68.9% – 73.4%
(0.07) – UVA – 30.8% – 33.1%
(0.07) – Penn State – 52.8% – 56.9%
(0.07) – Bucknell – 28.8% – 31.1%
(0.08) – UCD – 44.3% – 47.9%
(0.08) – UCSD – 36.0% – 39.0%
(0.08) – Trinity – 41.2% – 45.0%
(0.09) – Michigan – 48.4% – 53.0%
(0.10) – UC Berkeley – 20.6% – 22.8%
(0.10) – Penn – 16.8% – 18.7%
(0.10) – U Wisc – 53.4% – 59.5%
(0.11) – U Wash – 54.0% – 60.8%
(0.11) – Cornell – 17.3% – 19.5%
(0.12) – UCI – 41.0% – 46.8%
(0.12) – RPI – 42.4% – 48.4%
(0.13) – U Texas – 43.8% – 50.2%
(0.14) – Colby – 31.4% – 36.4%
(0.22) – Carnegie Mellon – 32.7% – 41.8%
(0.43) – MIT – 9.9% – 17.3%
(0.46) – Harvey Mudd – 27.7% – 51.3%
(0.54) – CalTech – 11.8% – 25.9%</p>

57

<p>I fear I came off as sexist, and for that I apologize. I am a professional woman and am anything but sexist. My point was that boys and girls and men and women are different, equally capable, but different and as such should be judged differently.</p>

58

<p>Admit Rate is a useless metric.</p>

<p>If you want to see if a school is gender blind, you need to show SAT and GPA range of admitted students broken out by gender (or at least median scores/GPA). And if the school is gender blind, the ranges of admitted students will be the same.</p>

<p>I’m pretty sure I’ve read in numerous places that Cal Tech is blind to gender and minority status.</p>

59

<p>Admissions is a very inexact science at most of those schools listed above to equate strict SAT and GPAs as comparative value. It’ s no less complete than simple percentages listed. You’ve recommendations, rigor, EC’s (combined with rigor), etc that all fit together in some sort of weird puzzle. And truth is, I’d rather see a kid involved in school life and contributing to their community positively who might be getting a less than perfect SAT and GPA. And from all the conversations I’ve ever had with admission folk over the last 9 years, I believe they think that was as well.</p>

60

<p>Interesting stats, papa. I’ll have to take a closer look at those.</p>