At the school I attend, the females tend to put more effort in academics compared to the males. I don’t know if this is true or at least a trend nationwide, but if it is, then would college have different standards for males vs females. I know colleges would want to maintain the same ratio of men to women, so would being a male be an advantage to colleges. Also, I know some colleges (LAC, or Engineering) tend to be more favored by a specific gender. So for colleges such as the Ivys, would being a male have any advantage?
Women apply to the top schools in greater numbers than men. For schools with such tiny admit rates, the gender balance is easily obtained w/o any need to “lower the bar” for males. Your statistical chances increase infinitesimally.
Your points are valid. There are more women than men in college in this country. At many LACs, there are more women than men. And yes, I do believe that LACs with equal numbers of women and men will accept somewhat lower standards from their male applicants. (I now expect a deluge of comments to the contrary.)
Post cut off, editing. Anyway, a college like Brown receives many more female than male applicants. But they get tens of thousands of applications anyway, so no gender advantage, IMO. At LACs, probably.
it’s well documented that some LACs dip for young men. Kenyon rep wrote an op ed for the New York Times explaining this back in the day. Boys tend to do more poorly in school across the board: across socioeconomic strata, across ethnic and racial lines, private vs public education. There are fewer boys in higher ed than girls.
See The Problem with Boys to explain this in more detail – https://www.amazon.com/Trouble-Boys-Surprising-Problems-Educators/dp/0307381293
My dated understanding of this issue is that after Kenyon wrote about this, it was widely regarded as illegal. Basically it means that affirmative action for boys equals discrimination against women. If you look at common data sets, you can see that the numbers look like no colleges are doing it–or very few. Bear in mind that schools self-report data for the CDS (if this is wrong, someone please correct me).
Because of the disparities in achievement in high school of boys and girls, it’s hard to imagine that some schools are not practicing affirmative action for young men.
Here are a few random articles discussing affirmative action for young men in college admissions FWIW
http://www.mindingthecampus.org/2010/06/the_quiet_preference_for_men_i/