<p>Also, a tangent, but sort of related...it's hilarious to me, the presumptions that people make about who majors in what at MIT.</p>
<p>As of this fall, MIT undergrad is 44.5% women. So let's say anything over 40% women has a strong female representation.</p>
<p>The following science, engineering, and architecture & planning majors fit this description (I'm not even going to go into the field-based snobbery in some of these posts):</p>
<p>The School of Humanities is 52% women at the undergrad level - an overrepresentation, but hardly overwhelming. The School of Management is 43%. The School of Science, on the other hand, is 53%.</p>
<p>As I said, a tangent. But I do get annoyed at the assumptions that people make. For example, "A lot more girls tend to go into Management or one of the humanities".</p>
<p>For the record, I don't feel that making generalizations degrading one group or another is particularly useful, even when one is making it to offset another stereotype (e.g., "the female applicant pool kicks the male applicant pool's ass.") While there is undeniably some kind of boost for being female according to what I have read, I think it is largely exagerrated for two reasons. For one, self-selection makes the admit rate misleading. Secondly, admissions at MIT is unpredictable for a candidate of any gender, but most people aren't aware of this. Whenever a somewhat low stats female is admitted, people attribute it to affirmative action when in fact many females with near-perfect stats were rejected in favor of the low stats female.</p>
<p>jessiehl: I'm not even going to go into the field-based snobbery in some of these posts.</p>
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<p>I just thought I'd add that the different majors aren't necessarily curved the same. I majored in EECS and took many classes in ChemE, chemistry, and physics, and the EECS classes were curved much harder than my other classes. In the general institute requirements, chem, physics, and Chem E classes, the mean was a middle "B". In course 6, the mean was the cut-off between a "B" and a "C". So, just because of the curving differences, course 6 was a more difficult major to get a higher GPA in than some others. At one point, 60% of the students at MIT were in course 6, so it could really throw off the statistics.</p>
<p>To be fair, I looked at the phi beta kappa list for one year and it came out to about 67% male, which is not that much considering the class was probably ~55% male. Also, the 67% statistic may be off because I had trouble determining which gender some of the Asian names were.</p>
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I majored in EECS and took many classes in ChemE, chemistry, and physics, and the EECS classes were curved much harder than my other classes.
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<p>Huh. Not my experience (I wasn't course 6, but I took a bunch of EECS classes, and a bunch of classes in various departments for that matter). And definitely not what I hear from the course 8 and 10 people (the "B is the mean" part)...not sure about 5. Of course, these things change over time. What year were you?</p>
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At one point, 60% of the students at MIT were in course 6, so it could really throw off the statistics.
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<p>Oh, how times change. :D It's currently 16%.</p>
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Physics with Electrical Engineering (60%)
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<p>that must be like, 3 out of 5 people. Is this 8B with concentration in EE?</p>
<p>In 8, classes (w/ tests) are generally curved to a B/B-, w/ about 1 std dev = A. I've only taken one physics class curved to a C. Lab is curved to god knows what.</p>
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BTW, on another thread you mentioned that your brother was not a very serious student, characterizing him as a "typical boy." I wonder how many people would get away with this type of characterization if it were describing a female instead of a male.
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What would be the sort of profile that would be described as "typically female"? I mean, my brother plays football, is good at math, and hates writing.</p>
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One thing about which there is no doubt is that the real picture here is extremely complicated, with some facts that make women look A LOT better than men academically and other facts that make men look A LOT better than women.
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I agree with this entirely, and I think you probably know that I think the whole thing is a sloppily-posed problem in the first place, because I don't really think the tools we're using are capable of deciding who's "smarter" than somebody else, even if it does mean something.</p>
<p>I open my mouth every year when we have this conversation, which is stupid, because I made all of my good arguments like two years ago and am too old and tired to look them up and repost them ad infinitum.</p>
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that must be like, 3 out of 5 people. Is this 8B with concentration in EE?
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<p><em>laugh</em> 3/5 is, in fact, exactly right.</p>
<p>Have you not heard of 8A? It's not 8B with a concentration in EE. It's full 8 with three or four required EE classes tacked on. As you can imagine, people don't exactly line up to do it. I think I've known one 8A person at MIT.</p>