<p>I know that a lot of internships and other programs for engineering students go as far as to state that women and minorities get a kind of "bump" in the admissions process for these programs. Does being gay ever help in a similar way? Just wondering.</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>Probably not for admissions. However, it might help if you’re a guy interested in other guys because engineering is 75%+ male.</p>
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<p>Of whom maybe half a percent are also gay. Where the other 25% are all girls.</p>
<p>In short, no. It doesn’t help to be gay.</p>
<p>You’re not thinking of falsifying your personal detail, are you?</p>
<p>I’m so done with these forums</p>
<p>No, I don’t really think so</p>
<p>I doubt that being gay will mean anything positive. It shouldn’t be a bad thing, but I don’t see any benefits towards being gay when it come to engineering.</p>
<p>This doesn’t necessarily correlate to Engineering but a classmate of mine was gay and proud as president of my HS Gay-Straight Alliance. He got the Questbridge Scholarship to Columbia and the Gates Millenium Scholarship and being a gay minority was a major contributor to this. He is majoring in Gender Studies.</p>
<p>I would say it’s advantageous to recognize and respect the person you are, regardless of what orientation you are. What kind of question is this, even? The whole point of “bumps” is to try to compensate in some small way for social prejudices that make your life more difficult. So no, it certainly doesn’t make it easier, much less “advantageous”.</p>
<p>And yes, god yes, even though engineering is a majorly male dominated field, it’s definitely not easy for gay men to find a partner in their field, simply because much of the culture skews more status quo/conservative and even those outside that mold may not really care too much about anything beyond their field of study or employment.</p>
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<p>Computer science and computer engineering do not seem to be particularly conservative areas in this respect, at least in Silicon Valley computer companies.</p>
<p>Engineers tend to skew more conservative but not necessarily “Fox News conservative.” It’s more like engineers skew fiscal conservative, social libertarian. It’s not like engineers are a big group of homophobes or anything.</p>
<p>My husband works in software engineering. Most of his superiors are gay males or gay females. Many are former military, in fact. Being gay definitely has not hindered not only their chances of getting a job, but also, their chances of promotion.</p>
<p>In fact, the gay females are at the highest positions, as they have not only the hook of being female, but they are more apt to relocate for new positions because they do not have the burden of family, ie, husband’s job is more important, so they have to stay put.</p>
<p>But, in the past years, many of these female bosses have married their partners, or at least had domestic partnerships, and we have attended many same sex baby showers in the past few years. It will be interesting to see what happens with the career of the mom who gave birth, as to whether they will have the same social tethers that heterosexual women with children have often faced in their careers.</p>
<p>If you are interning for beauty school then maybe</p>
<p>I wonder how many liars are on here.</p>
<p>No way, it would be way too easy to abuse. 50% better shot of getting internship at a hot company? Yeah, sure, I like dudes. When do I start?</p>