<p>I noticed that in a vast majority of colleges that are not engineering specific, women outnumber men greatly. Especially outside of top 20, this trend seems even more pronounced, like Georgetown 40:60 and American University 38:62.</p>
<p>Is this because more girls are going to college than boys?</p>
<p>Does this mean that in those colleges/universities with a significant gender imbalance, a male candidate gets a boost, however small it may be, when all other qualifications are more or less comparable???</p>
<p>I’m going to answer your first question.
Yes and no…
Yes, more women are going to college than every before, especially at top schools, but you also have to look at what type of schools the top ones are. They tend to be small and more nerdy. They inherently appeal more to women than men.
If you look at State U, there tend to be very balanced(if not favoring men) ratios. Why? because they inherently appeal to men. Also, men achieve less(not as a rule, but a generalization) than women on a high school level and are more likely to attend State U.</p>
<p>Your second question can be answered by Kenyon College’s Adcom in her letter “to all the girls i’ve rejected”-google it and you’ll find your answer</p>
<p>I’ve looked into this a bit, as I have a S interested in smaller schools. </p>
<p>The acceptance rates do differ somewhat for men and women at certain schools. American U however is not one of them - I’ve read somewhere that they have such a skewed population because they won’t consider gender in admissions. The female acceptance rate is higher than the male acceptance rate at American.</p>
<p>Vassar on the other hand does seem to give some advantage in admissions to men, attempting to not let the male/female ratio get any less than 40:60. Male acceptance rate 34%, female acceptance rate 21%, overall acceptance rate 25%. </p>
<p>At D’s top choice school, the M/F ratio is 40/60. A quick look at their common data set reveals that last year they admitted 47% of male applicants, and 39.7% of female applicants. So yes, the fact that there are more women applying than men does appear to make it more difficult to get into this particular school. D is aware of this fact.</p>
<p>Vassar told us at an admissions session that there is a slight advantage to being male because colleges that slip below the 60/40 threshold get signigicantly less popular. Good for my son for whom it is a reach.</p>
<p>I don’t think public universities have a gender bias. Looking at the top 2 universities in this state, both admit more females than males percent-wise.</p>
<p>Using undergraduate admissions rate data collected from more than 1,400 four-year colleges and universities that participate in the magazine’s rankings, U.S. News has found that over the past 10 years many schools are maintaining their gender balance by admitting men and women at sometimes drastically different rates.
The schools that are most competitiveHarvard, Duke, and Rice for examplehave so many applicants and so many high achievers that they naturally maintain balanced student bodies by skimming the cream of the crop. But in the tier of selective colleges just below them, maintaining gender equity on some campuses appears to require a thumb on the scale in favor of boys. It’s at these schools, including Pomona, Boston College, Wesleyan University, Tufts, and the College of William and Mary, that the gap in admit rates is particularly acute.
The reason for these lower admissions rates for female students is simple, if bitterly ironic: From the early grades on up, girls tend to be better students. By the time college admissions come into the picture, many watchers of the “boy gap” agree, it’s too late for the lads to catch up on their own. Indeed, beginning in those formative K-12 years, girls watch less television, spend less time playing sports, and are far less likely to find themselves in detention. They are more likely to participate in drama, art, and music classesextracurriculars that are catnip for admissions officers. Across the board, girls study more, score better, and are less likely to find themselves in special education classes.</p>
<p>Having all boys, I am well aware of the fact that, in general, girls out-perform boys in high school. This is likely due to maturity as well as girls being more willing to ask for help. </p>
<p>The guestion I haven’t read much about, however, is whether that disparity continues in college. Do the girls continue to do better or do the boys catch up as they mature? I have a feeling there is still a gap (more boyslfunk out or fail to graduate). I doubt these schools are admitting boys that are not capable and if the schools look more carefully they may see that these boys are just as capable as the girls, but just were not as focused on or motivated by getting an A instead of a B. </p>
<p>I also wonder what the difference is between the GPA of an admitted boy and a rejected girl.</p>
<p>This is anecdotal, but in one of my son’s graduating classes, 2 girls were admitted to MIT and 2 boys (who were just as qualified, if not more so) were not. We had noticed this tendancy in the previous graduating class as well.</p>
<p>It might have been a temporary blip when predominantly male engineering colleges were really pushing to admit more women, but I would say even today these schools favor the female candidate. Female and URM is even better. ;)</p>
<p>The schools that state they don’t consider gender in admissions–how do they not know the applicant’s gender? Do they consider files without the name attached?</p>
<p>I think that admissions virtually always know the gender of each applicant, but it doesn’t seem to affect admission rates at many schools. When we looked at the common data set for AU last year, it showed the same admission rate for male/female applicants even though the school population skews heavily female. At schools where gender is considered as a factor, we would see a difference in admission rates reflecting that (like vassar)</p>
<p>We have asked the AdCons of several LAC’s with a larger disparity in their M/F ratio whether D would be negatively impacted by her gender in the admissions process. We received the standard line by most that they are looking for the “most qualified” applicants regardless of gender. However, they also pointed out that they have to enroll a “balanced and representative class”. In other words, yes, gender will have some impact but I am not sure how much. </p>
<p>We are actually considering submitting an application to one of the colleges that have a larger male ratio, primarily some of schools with an engineering major, to see if this helps hedge her bets. It seems crazy enough to work.</p>
<p>I agree that applying to a school where you and your kind are underrepresented can be an advantage; the trouble for me was convincing my son that this is a good strategy for him. As a senior in high school he decided after one brief look at Wesleyan (he probably decided in his mind long before he actually stepped foot on any college campus) that he was not interested in any college with fewer than 5000 or so students.</p>
<p>Looking back, I could have insisted on a few more college visits and applications, but he was stubborn. He is now a sophomore, and I have yet to see him take advantage of as many of the opportunities that a large campus offers as he was expecting to. Also, he had one spectacular flame-out class failure, which he probably would have been able to avoid at a smaller college with better advising. On the other hand, he is happy where he is (and has done very well in all other classes), so — time will tell. </p>
<p>If you have a B/B+ male student with pretty good test scores who is willing to consider small colleges with a gender imbalance problem, this is a great strategy to try.</p>
<p>another source of admission stats is the colleges’ own Common Data Set. Just google ‘college name common data set’. But note, not all colleges publish their CDS.</p>