<p>Data compiled using 2008-09 CDS, except DePauw which was 2009-10 CDS. Ranking is from the current (2010?) USNWR. I unfortunately don't know enough statistics to do anything other than a simple differential calculation. The results here are rather interesting, though. I will point out selected points in the next post.</p>
<p>" Wellesley, Smith, Bryn Mawr, Mt. Holyoke, Scripps, and Barnard are women’s colleges.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Harvey Mudd is commonly considered a tech school. The enrolled class of 2008-09 is 64.5% male, with a much higher female acceptance rate.</p></li>
<li><p>West Point is a military academy. The enrolled class is 85% male, but women are actually admitted at a lower rate than men.</p></li>
<li><p>Other schools that have a majority of enrolled male students: Claremont McKenna, Sewanee, Union.</p></li>
<li><p>Vassar, Connecticut College, and Skidmore (and possibly others?) are former women’s colleges. Only Skidmore releases its CDS; the enrolled class is 61.3% female and women are over 7% less likely to have been admitted.</p></li>
<li><p>Pomona is required by charter to have a 50/50 gender balance. The female acceptance rate is nearly 8% lower than the male acceptance rate.</p></li>
<li><p>Other coed liberal arts colleges that significantly disadvantage women: Swarthmore, Middlebury, Wesleyan, Kenyon.</p></li>
<li><p>Conversely, coed liberal arts colleges that have a significantly higher acceptance rate for women (>2% differential): Grinnell, Colby, Colorado College, Bucknell, Sewanee, Trinity (CT), DePauw, F&M, Union, Centre, Dickinson, Reed. It is worth noting that Bucknell and Union offer engineering.</p></li>
<li><p>Trinity (CT) admits women at a 5% higher rate than men, yet only enrolls 51% women.</p></li>
<li><p>Colleges that do not release a public CDS that I can find: Vassar, US Naval Academy, Occidental, Lafayette, Bard, Connecticut College.</p></li>
</ul>
That’s true in absolute terms. However, it’s probably more appropriate to compare the M/F acceptance rate numbers in relative terms. An 8% absolute difference is much more significant when acceptance rates are low than when they are high. </p>
<p>For example, the list above indicates that Pomona and Skidmore both have higher acceptance rates for men, by 7.6% and 7.4% respectively. Based on those numbers alone, you might assume that both schools favor male applicants to about the same degree.</p>
<p>But in relative terms, the male acceptance rate at Pomona is about 60% higher than the female rate. Statistically, if you have a Y chromosome, your chances of acceptance at Pomona rise by approximately 60%. At Skidmore, on the other hand, the male acceptance rate is only about 16% higher than the female rate.</p>
<p>It should be apparent that 60% vs 16% is a more striking difference that 7.6% vs 7.4%. Pomona’s admissions policies arguably favor male applicants to a much greater degree than Skidmore’s, despite the nearly identical “F-M Diff” numbers shown in the table above.</p>
<p>The bottom line is that many top schools have unbalanced applicant pools, with significantly more female applicants than male applicants. At Brown, for example, there were 12,518 female applicants vs 8,115 male applicants for Fall 2008. So there were 54% more women than men in the applicant pool. </p>
<p>But Brown wants a reasonably balanced enrollment. To get it, they have accept male applicants at a higher rate and female applicants at a lower rate. The male acceptance rate was 45% higher than the female acceptance rate,</p>
<p>And yet women still outnumbered men, by 11%, in the entering class.</p>
<p>Corbett - As I said, my background in statistics is woefully inadequate. If you can turn your logic into a formula to calculate a new column, please do share it…</p>
<p>I’ve always known abstractly that it is more difficult for female applicants to gain admission to top schools, especially top LACs; but these numbers put it into perspective.</p>
<p>I think in general, without gettting overly granular about this, the sheer numbers of female applicants to college having exploded in the last 30 years (and now most of them graduating in something more than “nursing or education” instead of dropping out after a few years) coupled with a decrease in male applications overall at many schools means that it is harder for women to gain admission at particularly the most selective schools. That explains most of the differential. Many schools attempt to reach an even balance in gender in their incoming classes, and some have acquiesced to reality and now you may see stark differences in the number of women admitted versus men. If more colleges were absolutist about a 50/50 gender class, the number of women accepted would plummet…simply because they have more female applications overall than male. </p>
<p>Studies have been done and continuing to be done why males are not applying to colleges as much and why some males drop out of college more frequently than others.<br>
Some have even suggested (I am not saying I agree with this) that as we become more language oriented (CR) and less hands on engineering oriented in society, where males “in general” (yes, I know there are always exceptions and many women make excellent engineers or do mechanical related jobs), these differences will accentuate over time. (Those “inate” skillsets we have genetically. Verbal versus mechanical/hands on type of things). </p>
<p>I am not saying that males admitted have lower stats and scores necessarily. Only that insofar as schools stay close to the 50/50 gender parity in admissions, that women may have a tougher road to climb as they have more gender competition in the number of applications.</p>
<p>Three years ago my D1 was waitlisted at a very top tier LAC. A male friend of hers with lower stats was admitted. So we experienced this phenomenon straight up. It is what it is.</p>
I am not saying that males admitted have lower stats and scores necessarily.
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</p>
<p>Without equivocating, I would say that the general trend does indicate admitted males having lower stats; if admissions must reach deeper into the male applicant pool in order to achieve a semblance of gender parity, obviously some admitted men would not have met the higher standard for women.</p>
<p>Hmm. Are you aware of any colleges that have posted the stats of their admits and enrolled students broken down by gender? That would be interesting, for sure. But till I see them, I’d be pretty hesitant about making such a sweeping statement. </p>
<p>I’m not exactly sure how this fits into the conversation, but there’s a strange trend at my son’s high school in that for several years the top 10% of the class based on grades has been mostly girls, but the top 10% of the class based on SATs has been mostly boys. Wondering if other schools have seen this trend.</p>
<p>^ I have not seen such data. However, I do not believe that the male applicant pool is significantly stronger than the female applicant pool, especially at the LACs in my OP (the opposite would be more likely). This disparity has been acknowledged at least once, by Kenyon’s dean of admissions IIRC. Therefore, if the male applicant pool is NOT stronger than the female applicant pool, and a higher percentage of the male applicant pool is admitted, it follows that the admitted male applicants will be overall weaker than the admitted female applicants.</p>
<p>I disagree that the male applicant pool necessarily would have to be stronger in order for debunk the claim that female applicants are being rejected in favor of lesser qualified males. All that would have to happen would be for the “weakest” male admit to be as strong as the “weakest” female admit. This seems quite possible when you consider that most of these schools admit more females than males in terms of raw numbers, even if the admit rate is higher for males (based, of course, on the fact that more females apply than males). Swarthmore, for example, admitted 461 males in 2008 and 502 females. Was the 503rd female applicant (who was not admitted) more qualified that the 461st male (who was admitted)? Perhaps she was, but I don’t see how we can draw this conclusion simply because the admit rate at Swat was 5.1% higher for men than for women. We’d have to see the data on stats. To be clear, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the data turned out to support your view, but I don’t think your conclusion follows from any information that has been presented thus far.</p>
<p>^ I think your logic is sound, but I can’t quite follow it, so help me out here. Swarthmore obviously has a smaller pool of male applicants than female applicants. Why would the two pools, though of differing sizes, have a different distribution of qualifications? I.e. the most qualified male applicant is probably equal to the most qualified female applicant, same for least-qualified. Barring any strange anomalies such as for military academies, which attract fewer females for a reason other than statistics–since Swarthmore’s smaller applicant pool is a result of the lower total number of qualified males in the U.S., not because Swarthmore is inherently less attractive to males–I would think that both applicant pools have a similar parabolic distribution of talent. (There’s a statistical term for the nice symmetrical parabola, but I can’t remember it ATM.) Thus, if the “standard” for admission was the same for both genders, logically X% of each pool should be admitted, and X should be the same for both.</p>
<p>There more males getting 700+ scores on the SAT, but females get better grades. I think any difference in the quality of applicants would vary from school to school, and depend on how each school weights these factors.</p>
<p>As a practical matter, it is what it is. I think it is very important for female applicant to undersand that they face a tougher challenge than the overall acceptance rate may suggest. Build a college list accordingly.</p>
<p>For my white female daughter, I always felt that 75th percentile states was the threshold for a match school.</p>
<p>Guys can use this data to their advantage as well. At many schools, a guy might be able to go for a reach with better odds of the gamble paying off.</p>
<p>First of all, without data, I don’t think we can assume anything about the overall applicant pools of male and female applicants for Swarthmore or any other school. Too many things could be going on.</p>
<p>More importantly, I don’t think the overall make up of the respective male and female applicant pools is particularly important to the matter that I think most concerns us - namely whether females are being rejected in favor of less qualified males. If Swarthmore, for example, claims to have a gender-neutral standard for admission (I’m not saying Swat ever made such a claim), what I want to know is whether everyone who met that standard was admitted, and everyone who didn’t was not. All I’m saying is that it is possible that Swarthmore does have such a standard, and found that it was met by 461 males and 502 females. The rest of the applicant pool - that is, the ones who did not make the cut - is simply not relevant, unless, of course, the 503rd female was in fact more qualified than the 461st male, which to me would debunk the claim that the standard is the same for both genders.</p>
<p>And yes, I realize that with “holistic” admissions, the idea of such a “standard” probably exists only in theory, and the practical advice just given by interestedad is the way to go!</p>