<p>RD admit rates at the Ivies for the Class of 2009:
Not including that varying fraction of ostensible RD admits were actually deferred early admits, (who are often admitted at a higher rate), the "real" RD admit rates last year were roughly as follows:</p>
<p>Harvard: 5.5%
Yale: 6.7%
Princeton: 7.7%
Columbia: 8.3%
Brown: 11.8%
Dartmouth: 14.6%
Penn: 16.8%%
Cornell: 24.1%</p>
<p>It is not necessarily true that the admit rate is precisely the same for males and females. At Harvard, as it happens, this is more or less true, as males and females apply in more or less equal numbers, are admitted in more or less equal numbers, and matriculate at roughly the same rate.</p>
<p>This is not true everywhere. At Brown this year, the applicants were 61% female and only 39% male, so that one can expect that males will be admitted at a somewhat higher rate than females in order to partially redress the gender imbalance.</p>
<p>The opposite is true at Princeton, where the applicant group is canted toward the male end of the spectrum (58% of ED applicants were male), or at - say - MIT or Caltech, where the applicant group is as heavily male - or greater - as it is female at Brown.</p>
<p>At MIT or Caltech, the admit rate for females is substantially higher - both because the schools strive for gender diversity in admissions, but because females are statistically less likely to enroll if admitted.</p>
<p>This is not entirely true, and is mostly pointless. For example, Caltech does not have a lower female yield than male yield. The numbers I eyeball from <a href="http://diversity.caltech.edu/dpg_reports/irvine06-04/Data.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://diversity.caltech.edu/dpg_reports/irvine06-04/Data.pdf</a> (certainly not exact) give:</p>
<p>enroll / admit / apply</p>
<p>Caltech:
150/350/2250 male ~ 43% yield
85/175/600 female ~ 48% yield</p>
<p>MIT:
620/898/7669 male ~ 69%
457/767/2797 female ~60%</p>
<p>Harvard:
??</p>
<p>MIT is only marginally less successful with female recruits. Certainly not enough to explain the doubled acceptance rate. </p>
<p>Of course admit rate for someplace as casually applied to as Harvard is pretty useless, whereas Caltech/MIT are pretty self-selecting. It would be interesting to see a comparison after the lowest 25th percentile SAT scorers were stripped from the pool.</p>
<p>Far more interesting would be to see how the granting of tuition rake-offs in the form of so-called "merit scholarships" affects the yield rate at places like Caltech that utilize this device. Presumably the "merit scholarship" is useful in luring admits who might otherwise go elsewhere, or schools wouldn't utilize them.</p>
<p>It might also be interesting to see if the "merit scholarships" are disproportionately used to enduce females to enroll at Caltech these days, since an admit rate twice as high as it is for male applicants doesn't suffice to alter the almost 4:1 male composition of the applicant group.</p>
<p>Finally, the document you cite - which I have linked several times on CC - does not support either the numbers or the percentages you set forth for Caltech. Do those numbers come from some other source you have not cited?</p>
<p>5%? 6%? so leaving out the development, athletes, special people, URM, we get, what, 3%? that's like curtis.</p>
<p>Male applicants: 2,120
Male fraction of applicant group: 77%
Male acceptances: 374
Male admit rate: 17.6%
Male freshman enrollment: 148
Male yield rate: 39.6%</p>
<p>Female applicants: 641
Female fraction of the applicant group: 23%
Female acceptances: 192
Female admit rate: 28.5%
Female freshman enrollment: 59
Female yield rate: 30.7%</p>
<p>8% of undergraduates at Caltech receive so-called "merit-aid" packages, averaging $27,896 for each recipient.</p>
<hr>
<p>Source: USNews</p>
<p>Legacies and athletes are disproportionately included in the SCEA pool as opposed to the RD pool.</p>
<p>The RD admit rates I cite would be a bit higher if deferred early applicants are included. I prefer to count these people as part of those admitted from the early pool.</p>
<p>Simple mistake--who plots years backwards like that?</p>
<p>New numbers: </p>
<p>Caltech:</p>
<p>female: 65/170/750 ~ 38% yield
male: 150/350/2300 ~ 42% yield</p>
<p>Still, not too significant (1 sigma is ~6 females, which would bring the yield to 41%).</p>
<p>Harvard has a much larger incoming class and by the laws of larger numbers will be more likely to end up 50/50. I'm not trying to diss, I'm just saying that a lot of these base statistics (which you seize upon so fervently) are pretty unimportant. There's a lot of misinformation out there about colleges and college application, and I think it's a very tough to get much of a signal out of it. That's why USNews' rankings are so powerful--they communicate the same assessment to a lot of high achievers; and when you know so little about a school, even incorrect information can be good enough. </p>
<p>[There's an interesting strategy for publishing polls about political candidates. In some countries, results are not allowed to be published within the last couple days of the election. Unfortunately, this has a negative effect on the average uninformed voter. A much more just solution is to punish severely those who fake poll data. Because, like above, even incorrect or anonymous data can be useful in forming your opinion of a candidate (I'm more left than most of the population, most of the population is voting for Mr. Right, so this guy must be Mr. Left)]</p>
<p>I'm not so sure about what would happen if you stripped a bunch of low scores from the stats. You'd probably have to do it everywhere, and even then, what would it measure?</p>
<p>Your Caltech numbers are STILL wrong, if you're basing them off that chart. I've given you the ACTUAL data as reported by the school to USNews for 2004-2005.</p>
<p>The gender breakdown (which, after all, is the focus of the discussion here) can be heavily female among applicant pools these days, either at very large schools OR very small schools.</p>
<p>About the ONLY factor increasing the male fraction is emphasis on science. This is why Caltech and MIT get disproportionately male applications (they are quite different in size), schools with large engineering components (like Cornell and Princeton) have a slight male tilt, schools like Harvard and Stanford with balanced strength have a near balance, Yale (slightly weaker in the sciences) has a 53-47% female tilt among applicants, while a more liberal-artsy place like Brown is becoming heavily female in the applicant group (61% famale, 39% male this year.)</p>
<p>My pont is that ALL strive for greater gender balance, to the extent feasible,and where an imbalance creeps into the applicant pool, the schools try and address it at the admit stage. Thus, there may be an edge for male of female applicants, respespectively, depending on the gender composition of the applicant pool.</p>
<p>The question is exactly when a slight "thumb on the scale" for one gender or the other becomes out-and-out "affirmative action" - with lower admissions standards for the group in short supply, "outreach" efforts to attract them, etc etc.</p>
<p>Generally speaking, schools have a lower yield rate for the most talented fraction of their admit pool, since these tend to be people who are in greater demand and to have several good options to choose from. </p>
<p>These are the so-called "cross admits" whose decisions are tracked in the "Revealed Preference" study and elsewhere.</p>
<p>Brown, for example, reports that the yield rate generally declines in almost a straight line as the SAT score for admits rise.</p>
<p>Caltech, where the yield is abnormally low for an elite, loses many of the top science students it seeks to Harvard, MIT and Stanford. The overall yield may be 38% or so, but the yield among the "superstar" admits to which it offers "Axeline" scholarships is more like 20%, despite the financial inducements.</p>
<p>Byerly,</p>
<p>Where did you get the numbers in your orginal post? Were they calculated for the CDS?</p>
<p>I agree that the merit scholarships are used to entice students to attend, much like athletic scholarships. Still not sure why this is a bad thing for the student but it does cost the institution.</p>
<p>Interesting numbers on Brown. I did not realize that their numbers were that skewed.</p>
<p>Yes Im wondering about that too. Where did you get your data?</p>
<p>If they wanted to maximize the impact on yield, Caltech would offer Axlines to students who are, by Caltech's lofty standards, excellent, but not superstars. The superstars have too many choices, and often turn down Caltech. If they gave merit awards to very good students who were 50/50 for getting in MIT, Harvard, etc, they would yield more of them. But that does not appear to be the goal.</p>
<p>Yeah, Ben Jones of Mit once said that the admit rates are 49% Female and 51% Male.</p>
<p>But as you see, while the admitted pool may be closely split on gender lines, the process is heavily biased in favor of females, since they constitute a far smaller percentage of the applicant pool than they do of the admitted pool.</p>