<p>Yay but seriously only 39% are males applying to brown. I love the system too.</p>
<p>I hate this ****. I absolutely do. I hate affirmative action, and I hate this. I don't care if the student body is 90% female at Harvard; if women seem to succeed more than do men in getting into colleges, then that's what it should be. Men shouldn't need any special treatment to compete with girls. It's the same with M.I.T. Girls should be given absolutely *no special status in the admissions process, regardless of how "underrepresented" they are.</p>
<p>Oh, and yes, I'm male, and I hate the system.</p>
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across the gobble
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<p>Did you see what time i posted the message?</p>
<p>I love how these articles always focus on girls getting into liberal arts college while just mentioning once how easily girls can get into engineering programs. Most engineering programs have three guys for every girl and try anything to get them.</p>
<p>Greetings.</p>
<p>So basically what is emerging is a pattern of affirmative action for males at the nation's top LAC's. The rationale being using sounds eerily like the rationale for a racially/ethnically diverse student body. ("Colleges, meanwhile, contend that their schools are best served by keeping things balanced.") I'm actually OK with this kind of thinking; but many (perhaps most?) Americans have not been. Witness the acrimonious debates and legal battles over affirmative action in higher ed for Blacks & Hispanics in recent years. And now we're faced with affirmative action for males who are potentially less qualified than their female counterparts. Fascinating! I wonder how Rush Limbaugh and his anti-affirmative action pals on talk radio will respond to this!</p>
<p>"I wonder how Rush Limbaugh and his anti-affirmative action pals on talk radio will respond to this!"</p>
<p>With as much vehemence as with racial discrimination. Read this blog post by a prominent anti-affirmative action crusader:</p>
<p>Most girls don't put they want to go into engineering. It is very easy to pick up fake interest that is being used for an admission boost.</p>
<p>Maybe if they did gender-blind admissions for a while girls would take over the schools with like an 80/20 split. Then girls would stop applying because they don't want to be locked in with all girls for 4 years, and the boys would catch up. Problem solved!</p>
<p>Hi Aristotle.</p>
<p>This is an interesting post, articulating a coherent conservative position. I was especially surprised to see that highly ranked Brown may be facing the same issues with regard to gender balance as some of the schools profiled in the article being discussed here. So thanks for the link.</p>
<p>That said, this was posted by John Rosenberg. I have no idea who that is, though I'll take your word re: his reputation. Still he certainly doesn't have the platform/high profile that a Limbaugh, Coulter, Liddy, Buchannan or Hannity has. I'd really like to hear them get into a discussion of this. Do people seriously think that hundreds of guys would light up the phones saying that admissions should be gender blind a la past discussions of affirmative action for women and racial/ethnic minorities?</p>
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Do people seriously think that hundreds of guys would light up the phones saying that admissions should be gender blind a la past discussions of affirmative action for women and racial/ethnic minorities?
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<p>You know, I honestly have no idea. I don't think the problem has reached epic proportions; complaints have not yet been registered from anywhere on the political spectrum, so it's too early to tell. However, I can tell you that though I'm male, I'm mad as hell about this, if it's truly as they say. </p>
<p>Then again, I don't exactly fit the stereotypical image of an affirmative action opponent, so I suppose I'm not representative of the whole ;).</p>
<p>I haven't read anywhere that this problem is extra rampant at LACs. Does anyone have a link for this? I think the only real problem this is at are places like the ivys. I seriously doubt state schools have this problem unless someone can provide stats to prove me wrong :)</p>
<p>Here's another link that discusses this national trend. The 10/19/2005 USA Today article is entitled "College gender gap widens: 57% are women":</p>
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I seriously doubt state schools have this problem unless someone can provide stats to prove me wrong
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radronOmega,
Take a look at Wm&Mary's admission rates:
43.8% men
26.0% women
<a href="http://www.wm.edu/ir/part_c.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.wm.edu/ir/part_c.htm</a></p>
<p>I find the gender distribution of SAT scores 650 and above to be illuminating. (see Table 5. Score Distributions on Page 8 of the document below)
<a href="http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/about/news_info/cbsenior/yr2006/national-report.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/about/news_info/cbsenior/yr2006/national-report.pdf</a></p>
<p>In critical reading there are slightly more top-scoring women than men. In writing noticeably more women than men, but in math way more men than women. When it comes to admissions at top 50 universities and LACs is there really that much difference between the men and women applicants? I don't think the SAT data shows that.</p>
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I hate affirmative action, and I hate this. I don't care if the student body is 90% female at Harvard; if women seem to succeed more than do men in getting into colleges, then that's what it should be
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</p>
<p>As a woman, I disagree. I ABSOLUTELY prefer having lower odds and being able to go to a gender balanced school (one of the reasons I preferred Wes over, say, Vassar, was the 50/50 split instead of the 60/40 split, let alone a 90/10 split!). If my school started having gender-blind admissions and it messed with the ratio of men to women, I'd be VERY upset. Many women do not want to be at a school that's practically an all girl's school. I got into my top choice school, thankfully. But if the choice had been a "better" school with 90% women or a "not as good" school with a more even ratio, the decision would be REALLY easy for me...balanced ratio every time.</p>
<p>(of course, at a top school like Harvard or Wes, I doubt the men being let in are under qualified…there are just less of them applying, so they have better odds).</p>
<p>I find it interesting the differences between schools. William & Mary has an issue since there are so many women applying compared to men. However, Stanford, for instance, has an almost equal number of applications for both women and men. I think it comes to science and engineering: if LACs pushed these subjects a little more, maybe more men would apply.</p>
<p>Back when I was single, women rejected me at higher rates than I rejected them.</p>
<p>I think most educators would agree the current K-12 school system favors the way girls succeed. To me it is obvious that this wasn't always true. I suspect what does a disservice to boys is similar to what does a disservice to people of color, & for similar reasons of "temperament". Hopefuly no one world argue we should just let the girls be favored (and I'm an African American female), and let the boys fail. OK, maybe for a little while (smile). Ivy league admissions aside, letting kids fail because of a poorly designed system is just not good for our future.</p>
<p>The reason Vassar is 60/40 whereas Wwsleyan is 50/50 is because Wesleyan was once a boy's school and Vassar was once a girl's school. Sexism and homophobia combine to make it unappealing for many young men to attendschools that were formerly girl's schools: Skidmore, Conn. College, Wheaton, Sarah Lawrence among others. </p>
<p>LACs like Williams that emphasize sports also have no difficulty with gender balance.</p>
<p>I appreciate Weskid's POV but not all kids feel this way. My D certainly did mind when less qualified male students were accepted to Vasar over female students in the year above her. She solved this problem for herself by making Barnard her top choice school because she felt at an all women's institution with a feminist history her attributes and talents would be appreciated. She disn't want to be a place where a Humanities major to law school would be an admissions liability or where standardized test grades (which privilege men) were appreciated over GPA's (which privilege women). (She needed have worried because her 2130 was fine.)</p>
<p>I think sexism has a big role here because boy's fewel uncomfortable with nerd labels and acting out in class is often perceived as part of their gender role. We have no idea of what the outcome would be if we relaxed gender stereotyping and paid women what we pay men so that salaries of child care
workers could compete with those of car mechanics or even parking attendants (gov't. subsidized child care would be a big step here). Then we could see who really wanted to go to college, whov was qualified, and devise policies appropriate to best serve the most people.</p>
<p>I'm a female who scores like a male on standardized tests... higher Math than Verbal. I was admitted out of high school into the University of Michigan's #3 ranked udergraduate business program (by USNews)... another male dominated major. The admission rates are very low for this program. Although I had somewhat above average stats for the admitted students, I know there were many males rejected that had better stats. It has always bugged me that some females gained admission merely because of their gender. I wanted to know I earned the spot on merit alone. I will never know. Interestingly, the voters of the State of Michigan amended its Cosntitution to eliminate race and gender preferences the following year.</p>
<p>To be honest, if I was admitted because of my gender, I wouldn't have turned the opportunity down. So, I'm a firm believer in meritocracy and hippocritical at the same time. ;) I'll have to take some more philosophy or something to justify that postion in my own mind. Maybe I should go into politics.</p>
<p>I also didn't apply to two schools on my list because one had too many males and the other had too many females. I also believe that most females feel this way... or maybe my friends are not representative.</p>