<p>Whether colleges consider gender in admissions has been an topic of interest in D's college forum, and perhaps others. Interestingly, the Washington Post today reports that the Commission on Civil Rights, which had almost completed a study of this issue, has voted to end the study.</p>
<p>I haven't had much luck with links to Post articles, but here is the one for today's article by Daniel De Vise:</p>
<p>Feds</a> end probe of college gender bias - The Washington Post</p>
<p>From the article -
Apparently some of the appointees think gender discrimination is okay (or they had some other reason to not want to investigate it).</p>
<p>I am shocked, SHOCKED to find that some colleges use preferences in their admissions policy!</p>
<p>Yup, such a surprise!</p>
<p>And they even ADMIT some people, and REJECT some people. Oh, the very idea!</p>
<p>There are far, far more girls applying to and attending college right now. Maybe more men joined the military in recent years, or are working to help their families. You can’t just look at the stats and think "gender bias, or, discrimination. If only 100 boys apply, 43% is 43. If 200 girls apply, 29% is 58, so more girls were accepted, but that’s not how the stats make it look. Boys and girls both usually want to go to a school where the ratio is fairly even, but with fewer boys overall, many schools we looked at were girl heavy in number, like 60% females to 40% males.</p>
<p>^^ Unless the stats are quite different between the males/females applying, the admit rates of 43% vs 29%, regardless of the actual number of each admitted, certainly seems to show gender bias - i.e. they’re more likely to offer admission to a male simply because he’s a male and less likely to offer it to a female simply because she’s a female.</p>
<p>It seems to me that achieving gender balance is an appropriate factor in college admissions, for the same reason that achieving ethnic or geographical diversity is important. Most women who attend co-ed institutions would not be happy if they arrived on campus and found that there were 4 girls on campus for every guy. Similarly, the pro-male admission policies that make it harder for women to gain admission at some LAC’s is mirrored by pro-female admission policies at many tech schools. Statistically, it’s a lot easier for a female applicant to gain admission to MIT than a male.</p>
<p>^^ I also think most females or males wouldn’t be happy to find they were excluded from admission simply because of their gender whether in the spirit of ‘gender balance’ or not - just as I think most people wouldn’t be happy to find that racial bias may have limited their chances of admission. </p>
<p>If the ‘balance of gender’ is an important attribute for the applicant in choosing a college then they should take a look at the published stats and not apply to those with an imbalance they don’t find appealing. It’d be a self healing process to some extent - i.e. a 60/40 mix of f/m might end up with fewer females applying in an effort to seek out a college with more males and eventually it’d even out. This is just a gross generalization and there are other variables that come into play of course - like the applicants who aren’t so focused on the gender ratio and don’t care so they apply/attend regardless.</p>
<p>This works both ways, I’m surprised a lot of people don’t understand this. All a girl has to do to significantly increase her chances at getting into almost any college she wants is pick a major like mechanical, electrical, or computer engineering. Engineering is practically a golden ticket for any female to get their foot in the door at a college.</p>
<p>why don’t the people who have a problem with giving males or females advantages in admissions to certain colleges take up the same crusade against “affirmative” action. it seems hypocritical to me; both try to have diversity, and yet one is criticized and the other accepted.</p>
<p>also, as it has been stated, there are schools that favor boys (lacs in general) and schools that favor girls (engineering/science schools like MIT, caltech, etc) so really, it cancels out.</p>
<p>but affirmative action…that does not cancel out no matter how you look at it; an advantage is gained that is not made up elsewhere. and plus, i thought we were all equal? why the different standards? the common argument is that there are more blacks in poverty than whites, which i would agree with, but how about just taking that into consideration instead of race? i would be perfectly fine if people who are poorer got an advantage, but a poor black person shouldn’t get an advantage over a poor white person, is my argument.</p>
<p>
Favoring non-paying customers seems like a bad business decision…</p>
<p>I think you need a critical mass of each group (be it ethnic or economic) so that students in that group don’t feel marginalized. I am white so I cannot speak for the experience of students of color, but I imagine at times it is very much like being the only girl in a room of 30 male mathematicians, or being one of the few lower-class students in an environment where most take personal computers, cars, and vacations for granted. It’s fine for short periods of time, but over weeks and months I start feeling rather isolated and increasingly alienated from everyone around me.</p>
<p>I am a supporter of affirmative action because I think that it creates a more comfortable environment for minorities, and the added diversity might be a good experience for the majority as well.</p>
<p>@above: okay, that is a fine argument. now why can’t that same exact argument be used with regard to gender? </p>
<p>this is what i mean by hypocrisy: there are people who support racial affirmative action but don’t support having gender affirmative action, which actually goes both ways (unlike racial AA ironically)</p>
<p>You mean me? I support gender affirmative action to a reasonable extent. (I’ll take math graduate programs as an example because I went though the application process very recently. I am fine with graduate programs slightly lowering their standards for female applicants so that there’s more than one or two females in the program, but it would be ridiculous to aim for an equal gender ratio given the current applicant pool.)</p>
<p>I have no strong feelings on whether or not achieving a balanced gender ratio at undergraduate institutions falls into the realm of “reasonable”. You could probably argue both ways.</p>
<p>
Two discriminations don’t cancel each other out. What if the male wants to pursue engineering and the female wants to pursue PoliSci? Why should their admission chances be reduced simply because of the gender they happen to be? It’s not right.</p>
<p>Admissions should be gender and race blind IMO but the colleges can do whatever they want as long as it’s within the law.</p>
<p>It’s not “discrimination” when the school uses holistic admission practices in an effort to try to balance its class. They may also reject a strong prospective biology major because their biology dept. is already overcrowded, while accepting a weaker prospective Italian major, because they have a harder time finding students who want to study Italian at their school. </p>
<p>It could be discrimination if they drew hard bright lines – for example, specifying to their ad coms that all women with combined SATs under 2100 should be rejected, while all males with combined SATs over 1700 should be considered. But that’s not what they do – they look at the applicants one at a time, in the context of continually updated statistics about their admitted class. </p>
<p>I’d also point out that there may be other factors besides gender playing a part. If the school is looking to strengthen its math & science departments – it may be that they are seeing more males with lopsided stats (strong math, weak verbal) applying with those interests – and the lopsided stats may give the impression that males are getting in with lower scores. But the reality may be that most students with math SAT scores above 700 who seem to be leaning towards a college math major are getting in, whether male or female… but very few females are applying with that strong interest. </p>
<p>So you would really have to tease out the data way beyond looking at gender to even make out a case for discrimination.</p>
<p>I’m only referring to the practice of making the decision based on the gender, which is by definition discriminating based on that attribute - not the imbalance of applicants. I agree that one can’t look at simple data like the percentage split and automatically conclude the college is discriminating based on the gender but if they consider the gender before making their admission decision then it’s definitely discrimination. At the end of the day it’d be a shame if a female didn’t get accepted to the LAC because they were ‘full up’ already of females or the male didn’t get accepted to Caltech because they were already full up of males.</p>
<p>I doubt that it works that way. I think that the gender is a tip factor at some school, which is considered in combination with other tip factors. It goes back to that theoretical oboist applying to a college with an orchestra in need of one. Maybe the college needs more men, but the female oboist will still get in over the male violinist because the college wants the oboe. Or a male with weaker test scores gets in, not solely because he is male, but because he’s also a 6’6" basketball player and the coach would like him as a center on the Div III team.</p>