<p>Females account for less than 30% of all engineering undergrads...so, here are a few questions:
1) does being a female help in admissions to engineering schools?
2) is it better to be a female as there are less to "compete" against, or is a bad thing as males often look past females in engineering?</p>
<p>Congratulations. A lot of schools desperately need female engineers. The chances for admission for you will probably be higher than for male applicants.</p>
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<li><p>Many engineering schools give women a URM factor in consideration for admission. An MIT offical once referred to it as like getting an extra 20 points on the SAT. Note that does not mean it is "easy" to get admitted since engineering very often generally requires higher grades and test scores than other programs at many univerisites, e.g., you may be able to easily get into some university's liberal arts programs with an 1700 SAT and top 20% class rank but for its engineering program you may need above 2000 and top 10% rank.</p></li>
<li><p>If your no.2 is referring to admission to college, then see my response to no.1. If it is referring to engineering and employment in general, be aware that there still can be issues involving male bias in many workplaces and even in colleges (for such things as promotions, work given to you, office politics, elevation to professor), although officially such bias is prohibited by the applicable organization. In other words, you can pass rules and laws to make people change their spots but that does not mean they become spotless.</p></li>
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<p>It will either help you or make no difference. Since there are so many more males in engineering some schools try to make an active effort to recruit females. However, other schools don't. It's not difficult to find schools where the engineering population is heavily tilted towards the male gender (think CalTech) which suggests that the schools don't try to maintain a 1-1 ratio.</p>
<p>Check out this thread shoebox:</p>
<p>Yes, in most cases it will be "easier" to get in. I think being a girl in engineering at my school has made me work harder as I want to beat the guys. It's kinda girl thing at my school that we all try to score the best, and lots of times do.</p>
<p>i guess its a two-edged sword: easier admittance, worse time during school
i remember my very first engineering class we were split up into groups and i was put into a group of 4 guys, and we were given a real-life problem and needed to find a solution...naturally, i was completly ignored, then a guy in my group re-stated the idea and they all congratulated him on "such a good idea"...the only problem was, it included a mathmatical equation, so when we were deciding on who should present, i suggested him since it was "his" solution...needless to say, he looked like an @$$ in front of the class when he was question about a formula and equation, at which point i chimed in...
in the end, the class (im one of 4 girls) began to respect me more, and although the guy still probably thinks im a mindless bimbo, my TA loves me and ive had many projects were other guys have wanted to work with me on....
i guess the moral of the story is that we sometimes might have to suck it up and take the crap guys will give but keep our calm, take our chances to shine, and let the guys learn to respect us for our brains, not our butts or bimbo-status</p>