<p>We often hear people say that "engineering as a major" + "being a girl" = a 2-hit deadly combo when it comes to admissions at schools like Caltech and MIT, who want to draw a balanced male/female student ratio from an applicant pool that is traditionally >65% male and 35%< female. Is this perception roughly correct? or does it not hold as much truth as one might expect?</p>
<p>Does it even matter for you as an applicant? If you're going to apply, you should give it your best shot, and then you can't do anything more. </p>
<p>This subject has been debated to death, and you should use the search features. You really don't want to start another flame war on this subject (and people have tried many times to touch the subject without having it turn into a flame war... doesn't seem to work well).</p>
<p>I'm making this statement and if it starts something then I will take all of it I can. </p>
<p>Why would this subject start a flame war? (why does any subject start a flame war...) Really though are you serious differential? </p>
<p>Still, I can understand someone, perhaps like Generousjudge wanting a little bit of confidence in the days and weeks from now till decisions are received.</p>
<p>Yes I'm serious. If you had done a search on the forums you would see how many long threads exist in which this subject has been beaten to death.</p>
<p>Besides, if at all an applicant needs a "confidence boost," then they want something based on their merit. Getting confidence by asking if being a girl helps in the admission process won't actually help because if you are told "yes" then the answer comes back to bite you if you get in because then it means you needed a boost to compare against others. If the answer is "no" then you're back to facing reality, which isn't much fun. </p>
<p>Just relax a little. If you are getting too overly worried about the application process then:</p>
<p>A) the stress will probably adversely affect your application
B) there will be many more stressed out times in college; always looking for fake confidence boosting is another way to just blind yourself.</p>
<p>I generally don't respond to threads like this, but I wanted to save people time, because if the thread goes on, the same characters will come on and give the same rehash of their arguments for the last several years. Save yourself time and just read last years posts.</p>
<p>lolz, flame war.</p>
<p>Anyways, I would say that at MIT, it helps less that it would at, say, RPI or Harvey Mudd or Georgia Tech, where the male/female ratio is considerably more unbalanced.</p>
<p>Based on last year's numbers: MIT Female admit rate of 22% (vs. 9.6% male). Harvey Mudd, Female admit rate of 48% (vs. 17% male). </p>
<p>I didn't look at the numbers anywhere else. (Those were the schools that my son was deciding between last April, which is why I was curious enough to check.)</p>
<p>no it DOESN"T REALLY help your chances. The number might seem that way, but the girl's pool are much more self-selective.</p>
<p>maybe a little, but don't ever expect to get the easy way just because you are a girl!!
even IF your counselor kept reminding you it.</p>
<p>
[quote]
no it DOESN"T REALLY help your chances. The number might seem that way, but the girl's pool are much more self-selective.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Exactly. Any MIT Admissions officer will tell you this. Or to quote a comment from one of them to me on this topic: "In general, the female applicant pool kicks the male applicant pool's ass!"</p>
<p>As of fall '07, there are three undergrad engineering majors at MIT where women are the majority (materials, environmental, biochemical), and four more where women are over 40% (civil, ocean, nuclear, electrical). That's half the undergrad engineering majors. Certainly, MIT places value on having women in engineering, but it's not like they're a huge rarity to begin with, and MIT knows that what you're interested in now is not necessarily what you'll major in.</p>
<p>Now, if you've overcome gender discrimination to pursue your engineering interests, or something like that, it will look good for you.</p>
<p>As a slight diversion, I have never understood why there are so many more women in electrical engineering than computer science at MIT (41% vs. 21% at undergrad level). I don't know why it surprises me, but it does.</p>
<p>Cause electrical engineers are hot.</p>
<p>Maybe because physics+CS interests girls more than plain CS?</p>
<p>Well... </p>
<p>At least it didn't start a flame war. Very reasonable if not obviously beaten to death.</p>
<p>tetrisfan, not to get off-topic but, is "physics+CS" a major or a program?</p>
<p>^ No, it's just that EE is more like a combination of physics and CS, while CS is just... CS.</p>