<p>For those who want more information on the facts or data on this editorial there is a link to Kenyon website here: <a href="http://www.kenyon.edu/x31607.xml%5B/url%5D">http://www.kenyon.edu/x31607.xml</a></p>
<p>The following Letters to the Editor were printed in today's edition of the New York Times:</p>
<p>To the Editor:</p>
<p>Re "To All the Girls I've Rejected" (Op-Ed, March 23):</p>
<p>When Jennifer Delahunty Britz told the story of her daughter opening a thin envelope from one of the colleges she had applied to, I felt that she was speaking to me. When my early-decision application to one university was bumped to the next round, my guidance counselor called and was told that 60 percent of the school's early-decision applicants were female. </p>
<p>It is sad that women who have tirelessly fought for equal rights and opportunities in education are getting their ideals mailed back to them in thin envelopes. </p>
<p>Like Ms. Delahunty Britz's daughter, I excelled in a rigorous schedule filled with Advanced Placement courses. I participated in extracurricular activities, did well on my SAT's and had an after-school job. It makes me cringe to think that if I had been born the opposite sex, I might have been accepted to my dream school. </p>
<p>To say that the college process has been emotionally draining would be an understatement. It is hard to come to terms with the fact that being female means facing obstacles that boys my age don't face.</p>
<p>Madeline Langlieb
North Woodmere, N.Y.
March 23, 2006</p>
<p> </p>
<p>To the Editor:</p>
<p>I read with interest about the plight of highly accomplished young women applying for college during a time when applications from women far exceed those from men. As an ardent supporter of gender equality and affirmative action, I find myself on unfamiliar footing. My first thought is: women have earned their place in our elite institutions; let's give it to them. </p>
<p>My next thought is about what effect this debate will have on race-based affirmative action. But I wonder how analogous the situations are.</p>
<p>Affirmative action's strongest argument is that it helps level the effects of past (and present) discrimination. I have a hard time believing that men can make a straight-faced argument of historical systemic discrimination. </p>
<p>Absent that, affirmative action looks less like a necessary leg-up and more like an unearned head start.</p>
<p>Heather Wood
Tulsa, Okla., March 23, 2006</p>
<p> </p>
<p>To the Editor:</p>
<p>Jennifer Delahunty Britz describes a flawed admissions process in which grades and test scores are weighed against community service hours, leadership positions held and instruments played.</p>
<p>Nowhere did I hear about genuine scholarly curiosity, nowhere a recognition of students who eschew the glory of leadership positions to chase individual passions or unselfishly work for a group they don't lead. </p>
<p>I, for one, would prefer to see an acceptance letter go to a generous student with a passion for learning over one who has been brought up to chase arbitrary metrics of "achievement" at all costs.</p>
<p>Are colleges really choosing creative self-promotion over creative thinking? No wonder our country is such a mess. </p>
<p>David Silverstone
New York, March 23, 2006</p>
<p> </p>
<p>To the Editor: </p>
<p>Having served as an educator, administrator and admissions officer, I am obliged to note that the practice of "gender norming" in college admissions is hardly new.</p>
<p>It is the dirtiest little secret in higher education, primarily because it operates in favor of young white male applicants in the form of quotas. Without this practice, nearly all of the elite, historically male colleges would be more than 80 percent female. </p>
<p>These schools recognize that if the female population soars above 60 percent, the character of the college radically changes, most notably in terms of intercollegiate sports, which are a critical tool in fund-raising. Once again, the myth of the meritocracy is exposed for what it is.</p>
<p>Vaughn A. Carney
Stowe, Vt., March 23, 2006</p>
<p> </p>
<p>To the Editor:</p>
<p>I applied to Stanford in 1964 as a National Merit finalist with all A's except for a B in solid geometry/trig. The rejection letter stated that the quota for women that year was fixed at 400; the quota for men was 800.</p>
<p>What we seem to have lost is that overt quota system small progress to be sure.</p>
<p>Catherine Hammond
Tempe, Ariz., March 23, 2006</p>
<p> </p>
<p>To the Editor:</p>
<p>Blaming demographics for the difficulty women have in gaining admission to schools sidesteps the larger issue: students' worth is increasingly judged not by their grades and test scores but by how their gender, race, nationality and extracurricular pursuits can enhance a narrowly defined form of campus diversity.</p>
<p>Colleges should admit the reality that who you are is at least as important as what you have achieved.</p>
<p>Benjamin Borbély
New York, March 23, 2006</p>
<p> </p>
<p>To the Editor:</p>
<p>My advice to all the talented, smart young women who are concerned that they will face a gender barrier is to consider women's colleges. I found the atmosphere at Bryn Mawr to be stimulating, warm and highly conducive to intellectual and personal development.</p>
<p>For women who think that college isn't complete without men, many women's colleges have co-ed "brother" schools. Students can take classes, and sometimes even live at these schools.</p>
<p>Women's colleges are not "finishing schools," but places for motivated women to get an excellent education. </p>
<p>Brett Jocelyn Epstein
Helsingborg, Sweden
March 23, 2006</p>
<p>The following Op-Ed piece by John Tierney was also in today's New York Times:</p>
<p>When a boy opens his acceptance letter from college, he now has to wonder what most impressed the admissions officers. Did they want him for his mind, or just his body?</p>
<p>The admissions director at Kenyon College, Jennifer Delahunty Britz, published an Op-Ed article this week revealing an awkward truth about her job: affirmative action for boys. As the share of the boys in the applicant pool keeps shrinking it will soon be down to 40 percent nationally colleges are admitting less-qualified boys in order to keep the gender ratio balanced on campus.</p>
<p>This week's revelation did not please Kim Gandy, the president of the National Organization for Women, who told me that she might challenge the legality of affirmative action for male applicants. She and I are not normally ideological soulmates, but I have some sympathy with her on this policy.</p>
<p>It's not fair to the girls who are rejected despite having higher grades and test scores than the boys who get fat envelopes. It's not fair to the boys, either, if they're not ready to keep up with their classmates. Affirmative action just makes them prone to fail, and is probably one of the reasons that men are more likely than women to drop out of college. </p>
<p>After consulting with the federal Education Department, I can confidently report that this discrimination may violate the law or then again, it may not. Either way, I agree with Gandy that public colleges shouldn't practice it, because the government shouldn't favor one group over another.</p>
<p>Gandy's also wary of allowing private schools like Kenyon to discriminate, and she's skeptical of their justification: that they need a fairly even male-female ratio on campus to attract the best applicants of either sex. I'm not sure if that's true, but I trust the colleges to know better than me or Gandy or federal lawyers. As long as a school is private, let it favor whomever it wants men, women, alumni children, Latinos, African-Americans without any interference from the Education Department.</p>
<p>What the department should be doing is figuring out how to help boys reach college. The gender gap has been getting worse for two decades, but the Education Department still isn't focusing on it. Instead, it has an "educational equity" program aimed at helping girls and women. </p>
<p>The department is paying to encourage African and Slavic girls and women in Oregon to pursue careers in science. There's a grant to help women in West Virginia overcome "traditional, outdated 19th-century attitudes" by pursuing jobs in blue-collar trades. Another grant aims to motivate women at the Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn to study math.</p>
<p>Those are all noble goals. I'd be glad to see the women in Brooklyn take up advanced calculus. But the chief "equity" issue at their college is the shortage of men, who make up barely a fifth of the student body. What happened to the boys who didn't make it? </p>
<p>Boys are, on average, as smart as girls, but they are much less fond of school. They consistently receive lower grades, have more discipline problems and are more likely to be held back for a year or placed in special education classes. The Harvard economist Brian Jacob attributes these problems to boys' lack of "noncognitive skills," like their difficulties with paying attention in class, their disorganization and their reluctance to seek help from others. </p>
<p>Those are serious handicaps, but they could be mitigated if schools became more boy-friendly.</p>
<p>A few educators have suggested reforms: more games and competitions that appeal to boys, more outdoor exercise, more male teachers, more experiments with single-sex schools. But those ideas have gotten little attention or money. Schools have been too busy trying to close the gender gap in the few areas where boys are ahead, like sports and science. </p>
<p>No matter what changes are made to help boys, they'll probably still be less likely than girls to go on to college, simply because girls' skills and interests are better suited to the types of white-collar jobs that now require college degrees. Boys will remain more inclined to skip college in favor of relatively high-paying jobs in fields like construction and manufacturing.</p>
<p>There's no reason to expect a 50-50 ratio on campus and certainly no reason to mandate it. Boys don't need that kind of affirmative action. What they could use, long before college, is equal attention.</p>
<p>It appears that my earlier post has been seconded in a NY Times op-ed commentary in this morning's Times written by John Tierney. The commentator addresses the Kenyon director's op-ed commentary. He states in part:</p>
<p>" The Harvard economist Brian Jacobs attributes these problems to boys' lack of"noncognitive skills," like their difficulties paying attention in class,their disorganiztion and their reluctance to seek help from others."</p>
<p>Mr Tierney states that educators have suggested reforms such as more games and competitions that appeal to boys,more outdoor exercise,more male teachers,more experiments with all male single sex schools, but that these ideas have been given little attention or money.</p>
<p>The article opposes gender affirmative action to close the advantage girls have due to their obvious neuro study abilility superiority. The author appears to be opposed to all forms of affirmative action. It is becomming a constitutional issue as the president of NOW is considering challenging the legality of gender affirmative action. Please note the Bahki case and the other white male constitutional challenges at the univ. of MI</p>
<p>I for one as the father of a highly qualified D am opposed to her being potentially discriminated against because she is a white, bright female.</p>
<p>DANA's DAD</p>
<p>"Boys are, on average, as smart as girls, but they are much less fond of school. They consistently receive lower grades, have more discipline problems and are more likely to be held back for a year or placed in special education classes....Those are serious handicaps, but they could be mitigated if schools became more boy-friendly"</p>
<p>YES! I work in an elementary school. I do feel extremely frustrated for high-achieving girls who have higher hoops to jump through than boys when applying to college. It is unfair. It is. But I see the walking wounded in elementary school - and they are male. Boys are far more often sent for special education review. Boys are lost in the system very early on. I have a S and a D - the D would not consider a college without a close to even male/female ratio. It narrowed the search considerably, so I think college admissions people are right when they say their schools will be less attractive to at least some candidates if they approach a 60/40 threshold. It's a mess and very complicated. School is unfair for 18-year-old girls but it's just as unfair for 8-year-old boys...</p>
<p>Along this same line, two years ago Harvard announced that for the first time in its 350+ history, more girls were admitted than boys. So, who knows? Oftentimes, especially at private institutions, it's up to the college itself to decide what and how many students are needed to fill what it deems are its priorities to achieve its goals and mission. As the old adage asks, "Who said life was fair?" Ditto college admissions.</p>
<p>Inasmuch as I understand the FEAR of gender-based discrimination, I believe that using the OVERALL statistics tends to distort the picture, and especially at highly selective schools. Before one can claim discrimination at the top 25 or top 100 schools, one needs to pay closer examination to the composition of the pool of applicants and ascertain the differences in test scores, academic records, and ... socio-economic differences. In this regard, comparison with coed and non-coed schools at liberal schools is quite telling: the non-coed school trail comparable schools in academic records and tests scores. </p>
<p>One of the reasons for the differences in class composition and overall population at selective schools can be traced to the socio-economic differences. While girls outnumber boys in general, this does not happen to the same extent in the higher income levels. Hence, the difference at expensive -and selctive schools- is minimal. </p>
<p>You can find some of the numbers at the end of this article:</p>
<p>Check the table labeled HOW MALE REPRESENTATION BREAKS DOWN BY RACE AND INCOME and see how the numbers for the higher income brackets normalize.</p>
<p>PS As the brother of a sister who constantly humbles me in academics and athletics, I am most aware of the power of the weaker sex. :)</p>
<p>As to the difference in cognitive skills, one might be interested in this report:</p>
<p>Think Again: Men and Women Share Cognitive Skills</p>
<p>Research debunks myths about cognitive difference</p>
<p>Are boys better at math? Are girls better at language? If fewer women than men work as scientists and engineers, is that aptitude or culture? Psychologists have gathered solid evidence that boys and girls or men and women differ in very few significant ways -- differences that would matter in school or at work -- in how, and how well, they think. </p>
<p>At the University of Wisconsin, Janet Shibley Hyde has compiled meta-analytical studies on this topic for more than 10 years. By using this approach, which aggregates research findings from many studies, Hyde has boiled down hundreds of inquiries into one simple conclusion: The sexes are more the same than they are different. </p>
<p>At the end of 2005, Harvard University's Elizabeth Spelke reviewed 111 studies and papers and found that most suggest that men's and women's abilities for math and science have a genetic basis in cognitive systems that emerge in early childhood but give men and women on the whole equal aptitude for math and science. In fact, boy and girl infants were found to perform equally well as young as six months on tasks such as addition and subtraction (babies can do this, but not with pencil and paper!).</p>
<p>The evidence has piled up for years. In 1990, Hyde and her colleagues published a groundbreaking meta-analysis of 100 studies of math performance. Synthesizing data collected on more than three million participants between 1967 and 1987, researchers found no large, overall differences between boys and girls in math performance. Girls were slightly better at computation in elementary and middle school; in high school only, boys showed a slight edge in problem solving, perhaps because they took more science, which stresses problem solving. Boys and girls understood math concepts equally well and any gender differences narrowed over the years, belying the notion of a fixed or biological differentiating factor. </p>
<p>babar...yes I do 'know' soozie, cyber-lly that is. You've just arrived to this site. Welcome--but word up babs, CC posters try not to make snide remarks about one another--especially on the parent's forum. </p>
<p>As for your remark, I do have a happy family but my boys are not academic titans. By CC standards, their primary and secondary school records would earn them the title of 'slacker'. I was one myself--who then outperformed most of my peers as an architect. Compared to many CC posters, I don't have the same worry or disgust for slackers. </p>
<p>If I offended anyone with the description of my super-husband, apologies all around. I simply offered up a picture of his devotion to counterpoint abd rubbish the picture of 'Dad' obsessed with the sports field--and only the sports field.</p>
<p>Loved the op-ed and letters from the NYT--which we wouldn't get for a week over here. Thanks for posting those...</p>
<p>sorry - I didn't intend to offend you - I also didn't realize I was on the parent's forum - This appeared as a topic on the top of the discussion page - but you are right, so thanks for being gracious. Not at all to be defensive, but there are folks here who know it all, and it does get to me, but that's no excuse.</p>
<p>LOL, so now I'm okay because I was a once a slacker and have slacker progeny? :)</p>
<p>Don't let the razzle dazzle of CC talent get to you, babs. Enjoy it. It is kinda amazing. Anyway, don't sweat it, even if it may not seem so on CC, high school academic achievement is not The Only Prize in Life.</p>
<p>I find the several comments on the intellect of girls versus boys interesting. You see, I go to a school that is over 60% male and major in a department that is 85% male, so we never seem to have this problem. And the "are girls just not as smart as boys in technical matters?" debate goes on...
By the way, if any girls reading this are worried about their admissions chances and such, I encourage you to join the ranks of engineering and the hard sciences. It's more fun, I promise! :D</p>
<p>One reason suggested for the gender imbalance is that the teaching styles and behavioral expectations in elementary and secondary schools are biased toward girls and female learning styles, resulting in boys performing worse and being less interested in school.</p>
<p>I suppose there could be some truth to that, but another issue is that men with only a high school education typically have better career trajectories than women with no college. For example, the building trades are still heavily male dominated, and have many well paid positions that require no college or even trade school, if an employer is willing to do on the job training. Though the building trades are theoretically as open to females as males, the reality is that (all other factors aside) there is a lot of social pressure on women away from these occupations. </p>
<p>So my guess is, if fewer men are getting college degrees, it's because more men than women are finding that they can get what they want from life without one...while women have to have better credentials (i.e., more education) to achieve economic parity with men...just as they have to have better grades and SATs.</p>
<p>Another thought. When I worked a summer at the meat plant, they had a woman with an MBA answering telephones for $5.15 an hour, while the outside salesmen, none of whom had college degrees, earned about 3 times that much. This particular lady would have been great in an outside sales job too, she was very professional and well-liked by all the customers.</p>
<p>There is minimal differences in gender representation at the most selective schools because of matriculation patterns, not acceptance patterns. According to the Common Data Set, Yale had the following statistics for the Class of 2009:</p>
<p>Women Applied: 10,210 Accepted: 906 Matriculates: 651
Men Applied: 9,241 Accepted: 974 Matriculates: 670</p>
<p>Did Yale accept a larger percentage of men because they were more academically qualified, because they needed more men for the football and hockey teams or rather because more men drop out and flunk out? We will never know.</p>
<p>"Au Contraire Xiggi"</p>
<p>If you can reach a conclusion based on your example, power to you. </p>
<p>When looking at HYPS, what are the numbers for Princeton and Stanford, the other two schools that make their CDS public:</p>
<p>P Men 8744-980-669
P Women 7766-827-560</p>
<p>S Men 10236-1249-845
S Women 9959-1177-788 </p>
<p>Speaking about the impact of sports on applications/admissions, do you care to address Title IX? Me think not!</p>
<p>babar: <<< I am responding to the many posts commenting that dads who coach their boys are giving them messages that achieving in sports trumps academic achievements. I believe that dads who coach are often trying to help their kids (boys and girls) find success outside of the classroom. >>></p>
<p>You misunderstood my post. I didn't simply say that dads who coach kids' teams are sending the message that sports are more important than academics. WHAT my concern is that there are such dads who never spend nearly as much time on their kids academics as they do on their kids' sports (and all of those kinds of dads are not coaches, some are just bleacher sitters). </p>
<p>Many dads can tell you off the top of their heads how many points their kids scored during each of their last 10 games, but they couldn't tell you the last 10 scores of their kids' math or English tests.</p>
<p>Having a dad who overtly seems more interested in sports achievement (displayed by the amount of time spent on kids' sports or the amount of time talking about kids' sports) is sending (albeit unintentionally) the message that sports trump academics.</p>
<p>I just want to add another country's perspective. I'm an exchange student in Argentina right now and I just read an article about males vs females in the countries public universities. For some background, admission is based on qualifying exams. If you don't get in, you can study and take the tests later. The universities are public and free (although you have to find and pay for housing etc), and while there are private institutions, they are less prestigious because anyone who can pay can go (although passing is another story). </p>
<p>Anyway...the article was talking about the fact that a higher percentage of girls than boys graduate in general from Argentine universities. For majors such as math and sciences, the article said that 70+% of graduates are female (it listed specifics but I've forgotten). The author referred to cultural ideas of how girls and boys are 'supposed' to behave as influencing boys' classroom success. </p>
<p>The US isn't the only country with this kind of issue....but Argentines don't try to balance out who they admit. The universities are just huge...</p>
<p>I'm sorry if this offends anyone but this topic of female oppression in college admissions is really getting on my nerves. I had the exact same experience (accepted to only the bottom 2 schools on my list, after being deferred early, rejected from 2 schools, and but on the waitlist at 3) as these "extremely well qualified girls" getting into colleges last year as a white jewish male from an elite NYC private school, a background from which many admissions councils expect very great things. Every demographic that you can build from the pool of applicants will have it's own obstacles to struggle. I see no reason why females should be receiving any more attention over these struggles than the throngs of students who lose their spots every year to athletes, legacies, and minorities. Yes, college admissions is a very fickle, poorly run process, but that doesn't mean that any group has the right to claim it is getting the shorter end of the stick than any other group. The same problems will come up over and over again in the workplace anyway, we might as well start getting used to it.</p>
<p>""Has anyone seen a demographic breakdown? How do male vs. female numbers stack up for URM's?""</p>
<p>For African Americans, the gender imbalance is even more tipped toward there being a disproportionately high number of females in college than it is for whites. For example, from NPR's site:
"African-American females entering college outnumber black males by a ratio of 3 to 1. Reporter Mike Foley explores how Ohio State University began a vigorous recruiting campaign to tackle the problem."</p>
<p>This is why when it comes to recruiting at many schools, African Ameircan males are golden.</p>
<p>"Number of black men in college dwindle
Only 35% graduated within six years from college</p>
<p>THE BIG PICTURE</p>
<p>By Bill Alexander</p>
<p>Updated: 11:43 a.m. ET Jan. 14, 2004
The Amazing Vanishing black male is playing at a college campus near you.</p>
<p>There is an ever-widening gap between black male college enrollees and their female and white counterparts, says the D.C.-based American Council on Education (ACE).</p>
<p>Twenty years ago, according to ACE's "Annual Status Report on Minorities in Higher Education," 30 percent of African American male high school graduates (ages 18 to 24) were enrolled in college, compared with 28 percent of same-age black females and 41 percent of white males.</p>
<p>"Now, some 37 percent of black men are enrolled, compared with 42 percent of African American women and 44.5 percent of white males. (So while there are more black males enrolling in college today than 20 years ago, other groups have outstripped them in enrolling and, even more importantly, in retention rates.</p>
<p>The graduation rate of black men is lower than that of any group. Only 35 percent of black males enrollees graduated within six years from N.C.A.A. Division I colleges in 1996, compared with 59 percent of white males, 46 percent of Hispanic men, 41 percent of American Indian males and 45 percent of the black women who entered the same year.</p>
<p>Surveys and reports are hinting that the country's educational apparatus is stacked against the black male. According to the Manhattan Institute's Education Research Office, fewer than one in five students of color have graduated from high school, have a set of college-prep courses on their high school transcripts and "demonstrate basic literacy" the necessities for being "college ready.""
<a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3919177/%5B/url%5D">http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3919177/</a></p>