Gender Imbalance

Parents Forum
1

<p>I have read about this issue on several other threads, so forgive me if this ground has been covered before. </p>

<p>Some interesting stats from the College Board research site:</p>

<p>2005 SAT Reasoning test takers (Maryland as an example)
54.0% female
46.0% male</p>

<p>2004-2005 PSAT junior test takers (National)
54.8% female
45.2% male</p>

<p>That's an 8% to 9% differential, and with coed colleges seeking an even gender balance, boys are bound to be favored slightly in the admissions process, assuming applicant demographics are similar to SAT & PSAT populations.</p>

<p>Perhaps in #1 S's situation, the imbalance will help his chances, but not so with my HS freshman D in the coming few years.</p>

2

<p>Papa Chicken:</p>

<p>Although there is a gender imbalance in the number of girls and boys taking the SATs, there is also an imbalance (in favor of Boys) in the scores. </p>

<p>Some previously all-female schools that have gone coed do try to attract more males (e.g. Vassar) but previously all-male schools either have achieved gender balance (Wesleyan) or are still working on it (Harvard). If your D is interested in math/science, she would benefit from the continuing gender imbalance in those fields and in techy schools.</p>

3

<p>thanks marite.......I guess my curiosity on this issue is more related to the big picture that roughly 54% of the college-going population is female, but some of the more selective colleges don't appear to be 54% female......with the goal of 50-50 balance in mind. Meaning, males must somehow be favored.</p>

<p>...so, I pulled up my favorite USNews 2006 reporting, and summarized these stats for several college groups to have a look at the overall demographic female-male thing in relation to what various colleges look like.</p>

<p>Here are the top 15 schools from the national list:</p>

<p>Top National / Female% / Male%<br>
Harvard 48 52
Princeton 47 53
Yale 50 50
Penn 50 50
Duke 49 51
Stanford 48 52
CalTech 31 69
MIT 43 57
Columbia 47 53
Dartmouth 50 50
Washington 52 48
Northwestern 53 47
Cornell 50 50
Johns Hopk 49 51
Brown 54 46
Chicago 50 50</p>

<p>For the most part, these schools look more weighted toward the male side, with the notable exceptions of Wash U, Northwestern & Brown.</p>

<p>Looking at top LACs, the picture is a bit more even (Wellesley not included):</p>

<p>Top LAC / Female% / Male%<br>
Williams 51 49
Amherst 48 52
Swarthmore 52 48
Carleton 52 48
Bowdoin 49 51
Pomona 50 50
Haverford 53 47
Middlebury 52 48
Claremont M 48 52
Davidson 51 49</p>

<p>Of course many of the above schools were male-only some time ago.</p>

<p>But what's startling is comparing the above to the top publics:</p>

<p>Top Publics / Female% / Male%<br>
UC Berkely 54 46
UVa 54 46
UCLA 57 43
U Michigan 51 49
UNC 58 42
Will&Mary 55 45
UCSD 52 48
U Wisconsin 53 47
Ga Tech 28 72
UC Irvine 50 50</p>

<p>Much more representative of the college-going population in general, as one would expect. But my questions is....is 50-50 the desired goal or is it 54-46 like the college-going population? Either way, still seems to me that boys have some significant favor at the more selective colleges.</p>

4

<p>Papa:</p>

<p>You see some interesting dynamics on the gender issue. For example, Amherst caught my eye. Look at page 3 of the following admissions profile PDF:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.amherst.edu/admission/process/ssr08.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.amherst.edu/admission/process/ssr08.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>54% of their applications are female. 52% of the acceptances are female. But, only 47% of the enrolled class is female. So, something is going on in the yield equation where accepted men enroll at a higher rate than do women.</p>

<p>The corresponding numbers at Swarthmore paint a different picture:</p>

<p>57.5% of the applications are female. 51.5% of the acceptances are female. 51.6% of the enrolled class is female. So, their yield is balanced.</p>

5

<p>If you look at a broader college picture, you will see that nearly 60 per cent of college students today are female. This is reflected in the enrollment of many universities, including desirable ones like NYU, Emory and George Washington.
The Ivies have so many qualified applicants that they can balance the class without taking less qualified males over females. Other schools may give a slight "tip" to males, just as they may give a "tip" to a student from Nebraska as opposed to yet another New Yorker, to balance the class.
Fewer boys apply to college - they are more likely to drop out of high school or just finish and take a job. The lower the income level of the family, the more likely this is to happen, say recent articles on the subject.
High school favors those who study hard and regurgitate memorized information. The real world does not reward the same things that make high schoolers succesful - most highly paid people are those who can think outside the box, not repeat what was in the World History AP book. That is one reason why women are not automatically successful at work just because they got straight As in high school.
I am not saying women can't think outside the box, I'm just saying it's often not a requirement in high school, so it's hard to judge one's future success by high school grades. Colleges know that, plus they want to try and achieve some balance, so they will give a little extra consideration to boys if their applicant pool is uneven.</p>

6

<p>
[Quote]
Although there is a gender imbalance in the number of girls and boys taking the SATs, there is also an imbalance (in favor of Boys) in the scores.

[/Quote]
</p>

<p>In my daughter's IB program (about 55:45 female:male), 12 NMSFs. 11 girls, 1 boy.</p>

7

<p>See page 13 of the College Board Report on the scores of 2005 college-bound seniors. Males outperform females both at the mean and at the top range.<br>
However, as posters have noted before, females tend to have higher GPAs.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/about/news_info/cbsenior/yr2005/2005-college-bound-seniors.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/about/news_info/cbsenior/yr2005/2005-college-bound-seniors.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

8

<p>great observation interesteddad.....I looked at a few more schools with those stats in mind: % female applying, % female accepted, & % female enrolled for the latest incoming class reported (rounded #'s).......</p>

<p>College / %female applying / %female accepted / %female enrolled
Amherst 54 52 47
Swarthmore 58 52 52
Williams 51 51 51
Northwestern 54 53 54
Dartmouth 47 49 50
Princeton 47 46 46</p>

<p>So, Amherst still sticks out with this group as losing females through the decision process.....Dartmouth on the other hand gains them slightly through the process. Interesting that Swarthmore has the greatest drop percentage-wise from applying to admitted.....perhaps that reflects their attempt to balance the gender admits based upon a relatively high initial female application pool. For the most part, the other schools appear to have a fairly consistent balance for their admit decisions based upon the incoming application pool (at least by gender).</p>

9

<p>.....& going back to my OP theorizing that males somehow had a leg up in the admissions process.......doesn't seem to be that way....for the most part....at least for the selective school group in the above post; that is, admit percentages generally reflect the applicant percentages. Does appear that there is some self-selection in applicants submitting because the applications percentages do not reflect the gender share as a whole, as measured by SAT test-takers.</p>

10

<p>No question that admissions odds for men are more favorable than admissions odds for women at Swarthmore right now. That is the general trend nationally and there isn't a sufficiently strong historical "maleness" at Swarthmore to counteract that.</p>

<p>I like to harp on history as an indicator of campus "culture", but Swarthmore was quite unique as one of the few (perhaps only?) hoity-toit private college or university in the hoity-toit northeast market that was co-ed from day one. The first female PhD in the United States was a graduate of Swarthmore's very first class. So, once women began to enter the higher education ranks en mass from 1900 on, Swarthmore and the Seven Sisters were really the only colleges in that market segment for well-heeled, intelligent women. That continued until 1970. </p>

<p>I think that still shows up in the culture and governance of many schools and it also shows up dramatically in the alumni ranks. For example, Harvard's corporate board has one woman out of nine members. A different board might have selected a different president with different hypotheses on the role of women in science. It wasn't that long ago that women were even allowed in Harvard's main library.</p>

<p>I don't think many high school kids think about these issues explicitly, but I think they are pretty good about sensing campus cultures subconsciously when they sniff around campus. No way to prove it, of course...but my guess is that the strong role of women at Swarthmore over a century or more is probably the number one reason the campus culture today has less of a hard-core drinking scene than many of its peer colleges. Subtle cultural clues that get passed on from generation to generation at all of these schools.</p>

11

<p>"Swarthmore was quite unique as one of the few..."</p>

<p>What does THAT mean?!</p>

12

<p>It means that the vast majority of "prestigious" private colleges and universities in the northeast were single-sex until the 1970s.</p>

<p>Just off the top of my head, the following schools did not accept female applicants until the 1960s or later:</p>

<p>Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Dartmouth, Brown, UPenn, Williams, Amherst, Wesleyan, Bowdoin, and Haverford, UNC-Chapel Hill, UVa, Georgetown, Franklin & Marshall, Kenyon, Trinity College, Johns Hopkins, Davidson, W&L, Notre Dame.</p>

<p>It's easy to forget recent history, but the rapid introduction of coeducation is probably the biggest sea-change in East Coast education in the last century.</p>

<p>Other parts of the country, where public and private universities didn't spring up until the late 1800s tended to have more co-ed schools.</p>

<p>BTW, Middlebury was an early-adaptor of coeducation, accepting woment in the late 1800s, shortly after Swarthmore was founded as a co-ed college in 1864.</p>

13

<p>Missed the point.</p>

<p>It cannot be "unique" AND "one of the few".</p>

14

<p>Thanks for busting my chops. Sheesh.</p>

15

<p>here's a couple of the few, truly unique, articles on this topic (sorry, I couldn't help myself)......they are interesting at least, if not a bit dated and more about degree imbalance than the admissions process:</p>

<p><a href="http://nextwave.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2001/05/24/11%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://nextwave.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2001/05/24/11&lt;/a>
<a href="http://www.postsecondary.org/archives/previous/104201GUYSNOT.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.postsecondary.org/archives/previous/104201GUYSNOT.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>a few more current articles & blogs:
<a href="http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20050923/edit23.art.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20050923/edit23.art.htm&lt;/a>
<a href="http://www.theconglomerate.org/2005/09/are_there_too_f.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.theconglomerate.org/2005/09/are_there_too_f.html&lt;/a>
<a href="http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0404/peter_brown041604.asp%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0404/peter_brown041604.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>this one however relates more directly to the admissions process:
<a href="http://www.dickinson.edu/news/features/2000/timemag/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.dickinson.edu/news/features/2000/timemag/&lt;/a>
[Dickinson's latest female/male stats are 56%/44%]</p>

16

<p>Those are some funny articles, what with all the concern expressed by men about the poor put-upon boys. I wonder how women felt when they were largely shut out of higher education....or even voting....in this country?</p>

<p>If I might be allowed a tongue in cheek paraphrase of Larry Summers, "maybe we have to seriously consider the hypothesis that men are not genetically cut out for performing at the higher levels of academia...."</p>

17

<p>Well that was then and this is now so who cares about what a difficult time women had back in the time before any current students were born. The fact is the table has tilted in the other direction now--for whatever reason, and since the mantra of today is equal outcomes--not just equal opportunity, many think it needs to be considered a problem. If this were any other group but males it would already have some affirmative action class and a ribbon attached to it (blue would be nice).</p>

18

<p>Isn't the problem that fewer men are applying to college because fewer boys are graduating from high school, especially at lower socio-economic levels? I doubt it's the upper middle class boys who are not going to college - at our suburban high school 100% of the boys go.
I asked my high school son why he thought certain top schools like Swarthmore are more female and he had an easy answer:"Sports." He wouldn't considert applying to a school without a football team, and neither would most of his friends. Now, of course lots of boys don't care about watching college sports, but lots do, so that limits the apllicant pool. Of course many girls like football, too, but let's be honest, fewer care about it when applying to college. We can pretend that gender plays no role in anything, but look at the dance majors at almost any college and you'll find more women.
So someone has to figure out WHY fewer men make it to college, and then figure out WHY so many of these well educated women decide to drop out of the work force after they worked so hard to get into Harvard.</p>

19

<p>
[quote]
Well that was then and this is now so who cares about what a difficult time women had back in the time before any current students were born.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>In grade school I had teachers who assumed that girls shouldn't be good at math and tried to push me towards english etc. instead. My high school (70% female) was very capable of handling the kids who were good at english and history, but hadn't a clue how to deal with the math and science kids. I am an engineering major. My brother has a liberal arts degree. Many people are amused by this, or think it's backwards. </p>

<p>So I disagree with you on that.</p>

20

<p>Because working most professional jobs often involves virtually selling your soul and consumes far too much of your best years with marginal rewards whereas rasing a family has intrinsic value and rewards that last a lifetime.(in most cases)</p>