Or most schools? Or some schools? Or not so much anymore?
Dunno about most, but definitely some.
Check the Common Data Set for each school. You can figure out acceptance rate by gender.
But that would be for schools that only admit by major, SlackerMomMD. What about privates that don’t admit by major, but might still give a bump to women? Is there a way to dig deeper? I’m looking at UCs, some Ivies, Cal Poly SLO, UMN, USC, and a couple other privates with low admit rates. I’ll dig into the public Common Data Sets, but for instance, I don’t see what I’m looking for on Cornell’s Common Data Set other than % of women admitted.
At nearly all schools that admit by major or have “Technology” in their name, it’s a plus. At many the acceptance rate is about twice that of males. The only Ivy for which I looked and couldn’t find an answer was Princeton.
Although we don’t know the relative quality of the male and female applicants, the admit rates are generally quite a bit higher for women than for men at techy schools or programs. I suspect it’s still an advantage, though much less so, at a regular college. They have an over-abundance of women interested in some majors so if they have more men in other majors it won’t lead to a skewed campus. Still, I think the schools like to see diversity within majors as well as balance across the school. Even if schools don’t admit by major, it’s probably fairly evident for many students if they are likely to major in STEM. This was clear from my daughter’s essays.
mathmom, could you PM me? I would like to see the data you found, and I’m not doing a good job of finding what I am seeking in terms of engineering and women at these top schools. I am finding % of general admittance by gender only. (For instance, Yale admits 5.7% of women applicants and 6.89% of male applicants; Vandy admits about 15.4% of male applicants, and 11.44% of women applicants) But, what % of women engineering applicants does Vandy admit? This is what I’m trying to find.
Thanks much.
Take a look at the Common Data Set for each institution you are interested in and you should find what you are looking for.
Unless the school has a separate admittance program or admits by major, I don’t think you will find data. They’re not going to publish data based on their guess as to what everyone will major in.
Regarding Cornell, I can’t recall whether I saw any data about male/female admit rates to Engineering, but they do make an effort to recruit the accepted women with likely letters and a diversity in Engineering visit event.
sbjdorlo, I’d pm you, but I see I screwed up the grammar in my previous post. I only looked at the Princeton Data and couldn’t figure it out. Most common data sets won’t give you that information if the school doesn’t admit by major. So for example, if you are applying to Princeton engineering you write an extra essay, but they bundle the future engineers in with the general admit rate in the Common Data Set. Here’s what I would guess though. If you can get the engineering school to tell you what their m/f ratio is, the closer to 50/50 it is the more likely that they are giving women who are going into engineering a boost. If it’s 50/50 there is a decent chance it’s close to twice as much.
Cornell has a seriously cool graph that another poster shared on a similar thread:
Yes! Very astute observation, and very helpful when I dig deeper.
Thank you all very much.
There is a substantially higher admissions rate for women at Cornell Engineering than for men. You can see it here:
…the short answer is, in general the more famous & selective the school the less good it does you and the greater the gender imbalance in the school (m>f) the more good it does you.
Oops, sorry. Now I see that someone else already posted the Cornell graph.
Awesome graph! Thank you so much!
Agreed about the tech schools:
MIT 12.6% women 5.79% men
Caltech 15.77% women 6.39% men
Mudd 23.39% women 10.39% men
That’s not always true. It’s really about how many men vs women apply. So at MIT for example, the class is pretty close to 50/50 (53/47 for the class of 2019), but from the Common Data Set you can see that more than twice as many males apply as females and they accept about the same number of each: http://web.mit.edu/ir/cds/2015/c.html 5.5% for men vs 12.6%. Compare that to RPI which has a M/F ratio of 70/30 male acceptance rate is 36.3% and female acceptance rate is 40%. http://provost.rpi.edu/institutional-research/common-datasets I’d say it’s more of a boost to be a woman at MIT than RPI, wouldn’t you?
^^^
Yes and there is also an edge for women at CalTech. When D was applying I think she figured out she had about a 30% chance of being accepted. Very different to the published overall acceptance rate.
And the higher the level of college, the more the applicant needs to be seriously prepared and have the right activities. Don’t forget that even if a college doesn’t have a distinct school of engineering, they still need to review you in the context of your possible major, get balance in their class, not overfill certain majors and find students for others.
Women can have a slight edge, if engineering needs women. But they still have to show they are capable.
When a school has an extreme gender imbalance, it usually indicates policies to balance out the genders are either not implemented or not effective, often because they aren’t selective enough to implement large differences in acceptance rates. For example, New Jersey Institute of Technology has a poor M:F ratio of ~77% male / ~23% female. However, they also have a 70% acceptance rate. If they want to admit somewhat qualified applicants, they can’t drive the admit rate far above 70% for women to maintain a good balance. In contrast, the Cornell graph that was posted earlier shows a very well balanced M:F ratio for their engineering school with 52% male / 48% female. It’s easy to see why it is so well balanced. Males had a 9% acceptance rate, and females had a 27% acceptance rate. Cornell is selective enough to create a balanced male:female ratio by accepting a similar total number of male and female students, while still accepting qualified enough students to be academically successful.