<p>I know that recently, the percentage of females to males in the college community has led to an increase in male admissions. I was wondering, however, whether indicating an interest in a major dominated by a specific gender would increase the chances of an applicant of the opposite gender. Say that the math department in a school is dominated by males, or the theatre department by females (I know I am stereotyping here, but its kind of the point, so bear with me =]) </p>
<p>Would indicating an interest in mathematics increase the chances of a female applicant? Or, do schools not really care about balancing gender ratios within a major??</p>
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Would indicating an interest in mathematics increase the chances of a female applicant? Or, do schools not really care about balancing gender ratios within a major??
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No, it won't really help, unless you can really show through your activities and recs and essays that you truly want to pursue mathematics. Most students change majors several times (at least) during college, and admissions officers know this.</p>
<p>Unless you are applying for a competitive program/college within a university, such as engineering, or if you're applying to a largely male science/math oriented university like MIT, in which case just being a female can help.</p>
<p>Colleges are under moderate pressure to promote more women to associate professor and professor in male dominated fields such as engineering. If a woman is applying to an engineerng program and she has qualifying test scores, grades, rigor of high school education, good ec's and a demonstrated interest in engineering, she will have a slight advantage over males with similar qualifications. The one exception is biomedical engineering at top schools such at Johns Hopkins, Duke, Case Western, etc. where women typically out number men.</p>