Doing research at different colleges, there are some colleges that can have as much as a 5-10% increase in admissions chances if you are either a male or a female. The gender gap is not often talked about on College Confidential, but it is worth noting for future applicants.
Colleges where it HELPS to be a male applying:
Many small liberal arts colleges. For example, the acceptance rate for men at Amherst is 15%, while for women it is closer to 13%. At Williams, men also gain a 2% advantage. At Bates and Pomona, a 5% advantage. At Middlebury, a 4% advantage. 2% might sound low, but out of 1000 applicants, that is 20 MORE students than the other gender.
Colleges where it HELPS to be a female applying:
Many engineering, pre-professional, and STEM based schools. At Babson, women enjoy a 15% advantage over men. At Caltech, 9% more women get accepted. At MIT, the spread is 6%.
@BurgerMan1 With acceptance rates that differ more than 5%, it is evident that some colleges/universities sacrifice students better qualified for the sake of a closer balance of women and men.
You are absolutely correct. The LACs tend to get more female applicants, so the accept rate for females is generally lower. Conn College is one LAC in particular with a big difference between male/female admit rates- much easier for males to get in there. At Lehigh the opposite is true.
In the larger scheme of things, these differences are really quite small at most schools, and may have other explanations (gender preferences for intended majors with differing standards, perhaps?)
Some schools that have nursing programs usually have more female students and lower acceptance rates for such because the standards are higher for nursing.
For the LACs mentioned, in the context that only about 175 seats are open to females in regular decision, differential is meaningful. They have good yields as well.
IIRC, the MIT Admissions Blog has said that if you eliminate the applicants with no reasonable chance of admission, the apparent gender gap shrinks significantly. They get many more applications from unqualified men than from unqualified women.
@MrTongueTie Please excuse my ignorance but I don’t understand how a difference in acceptance rates for males and females can be assumed to be based on gender without knowing the caliber of the applicant pool of that gender. For all we know, the women who apply to Harvey Mudd may, in general, have better “stats” than the men do, thereby explaining their higher acceptance rate.
@Googie31 Good point! But colleges do not post statistics on the average test scores of each applicant pool, so there is no way to tell. But I doubt that women’s statistics are “so strong” at schools like Harvey Mudd and Caltech that they “conveniently” accept an equal amount of men and women, even when there are twice the amount of male students.
I am only trying to show that, at some colleges, being a certain gender can be a significant “hook” for getting into said college.
I think that the statement that the women who apply to Harvey Mudd are just “statistically better” is a straw man fallacy.
OP, you say “[w]ith acceptance rates that differ more than 5%, it is evident that some colleges/universities sacrifice students better qualified for the sake of a closer balance of women and men.” Anytime someone says “it is evident that” or “it is clear that” – that person is acknowledging that s/he has no evidence to support the assertion. You have an interesting theory; you admit (#11) that you do not have any data. Finally, what do you think entitles you to opine that one set of students is “better qualified” than another? I am sure that admissions offices around the country would love to know your protocol. Happy new year, ATS
You should have read my posts closer, before making such bold assertions. All of the data that I have posted has been from each college’s most recent Common Data Set, and the data that I admit I didn’t have were the qualifications of each applicant pool.
I am pointing to the FACT that at some colleges women have a one in four or one in five shot of getting in, while men have a one in ten or one in eight shot of getting in. Do you seriously think colleges don’t have easier standards for men/women at certain colleges? At schools like Harvey Mudd and Caltech, where men outnumber women applicants three to one or two to one, the admissions officers still accept a near equal amount of men and women.
I repeat that you are not qualified to assert who is “better qualified” to be admitted. I repeat that you have an interesting thesis. I am not impressed by the conclusions you want to draw from incomplete data. If that is not objective, I guess I must not know what the word means. Cheers. Leaving.