<p>blame it on Ke$ha</p>
<p>Yeah S0ad…I liked your ranting. </p>
<p>“Women are…being victimized by men precisely because they have outperformed them,” Professor Campbell said. What kind of message is that? AND he’s a college professor. Yikes! Note to son: tear up that acceptance letter!</p>
<p>So after I read this article on the front page of the Style section, I turned the page…and read a story on page two about a support group for men who are over 50 and have a child aged 5 or younger. Several of the men had adult children from their previous marriage(s).<br>
The drop quote: For my little son, Im always there, he said. For my older son, I missed too many birthdays. </p>
<p>Makes me almost afraid to turn to page 3. ;)</p>
<p>[Generation</a> B - Fatherhood Late in Life? Priceless - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/fashion/07genb.html?hpw]Generation”>http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/fashion/07genb.html?hpw)</p>
<p>I am at a college that is about 50/50. I didn’t want to go to a primarily women’s college. Most of the guys in my high school graduating class wanted a college that had a good education, of course, but also a college with sports and school spirit. So it makes sense that you may see a higher percentage of guys at Michigan than at a small LAC.</p>
<p>Fewer guys may go to college nationally, but I don’t think the ones who are there are there for “affirmative action.” Many of the top students in my high school class were guys. </p>
<p>Women in the sciencesd and engineering seem to meet a lot of guys wherever they are.</p>
<p>“Women are…being victimized by men precisely because they have outperformed them,”. Well, they did not outperform the men who are “victimizing” them, they both ended up at the same college, and from what I can tell the author did not mention any existing affirmative action program for guys.</p>
<p>Also,</p>
<p>“But still. It causes girls to overanalyze everything text messages, sideways glances, conversations, said Margaret Cheatham Williams, a junior at North Carolina. Girls will sit there with their friends for 15 minutes trying to figure out what punctuation to use in a text message.”</p>
<p>I am at a college that is 50/50, this still happens.</p>
<p>As for guys being jerks, what is the news there? Yes, some guys will be obnoxious, some won’t. Again, nothing new going on here.</p>
<p>Finally, for the “anonymous grinder”, every guy knows some one who is a serial “anonymous grinder”. If it makes you feel any better ladies, he gets made fun of a great deal for it. Also, nearly all girls (or at least the ones I am friends with) know how to combat anonymous grinding. There are a few easy methods but I am sure they are discussed on the thread that deals with this.</p>
<p>"Fewer guys may go to college nationally, but I don’t think the ones who are there are there for “affirmative action.”</p>
<p>" recently wrote about gender in college admissions, and today my colleague Daniel DeVise tells us in a Post story that civil rights investigators will soon begin reviewing admissions data from some Washington region colleges to see if women are targets of discrimination.</p>
<p>The issue is this: Because there are so many more female applicants, some schools admit a smaller percentage of females applicants than male applicants in order to keep a relatively balanced student population. Some see this as discrimination.</p>
<p>One of the schools that openly discusses the differences in gender admissions is The College of William and Mary, which admitted 43 percent of male applicants and 29 percent of female applicants in fall 2008.</p>
<p>Admissions Dean Henry Broaddus explained the school’s reasoning in a post here. He argued–effectively, I thought–that schools have a legitimate interest in enrolling a class that is not disproportionately male or female."</p>
<p>[The</a> Answer Sheet - Civil Rights Lawyer: Is ?gender balance? in college admissions illegal discrimination?](<a href=“http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/college-admissions/civil-rights-lawyer-is-gender.html]The”>http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/college-admissions/civil-rights-lawyer-is-gender.html)</p>
<p>"Too many boys arrive at their senior year of high school lacking both the skills and aspirations that would get them into, and through, college. At a typical state university, a gender gap of 10 percentage points in the freshman class grows by five points by graduation day, as more men than women drop out.</p>
<p>All this explains why colleges have been putting a thumb on the scale to favor men in admissions. There just aren’t enough highly qualified men to go around. Determining that colleges practice discrimination doesn’t take much detective work. Higher acceptance rates for men show that colleges dig deeper into their applicant pool to find them. The final proof: Freshman class profiles reveal that the women, with their far higher high-school grade point averages, are more academically qualified than the men. Interviews with admissions officers reveal that the girls’ essays sparkle compared to the boys’, and girls far outshine boys in extracurricular activities as well.</p>
<p>The Commission on Civil Rights cited an example written about in U.S. News & World Report in 2007: Virginia’s University of Richmond was maintaining its rough gender parity in men and women only by accepting women at a rate 13 percentage points lower than the men.</p>
<p>It would be patriotic to report that this discrimination against women is carried out in the national economic interest of boosting graduates in key math and science fields. But, in truth, it’s really a social consideration. Colleges simply want to avoid approaching the dreaded 60-40 female-male ratio. At that point, men start to take advantage of their scarcity and make social life miserable for the women by becoming “players” on the dating scene."
[Universities</a> admit men with lower qualifications than women in order to maintain the right gender ratio. Why aren’t men prepared for college? - WSJ.com](<a href=“http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703740004574513890645608558.html]Universities”>http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703740004574513890645608558.html)</p>
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<p>Maybe that is why DS is not concerned (I think) about hooking up with opposite sex.
Either that or the girls are not aggressive enough. </p>
<p>stats: Age nearly 25, engineer, working at large state university, Masters, excellent engineering schools. Saving money. Likes outdoors stuff (hike, bike, foodie, travels, maintains his music. NW location. Absolute requirement: Prospect must accept his Mother. </p>
<p>Go get him, MRS majors.
:)</p>
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<p>Okay, I feel compelled to come back to this with a straight face.</p>
<p>Before any of you parents get the wrong idea, almost no young people have this happen to them. Rather than simply getting rejected, he was actually punched in the face, so that suggests that it was at least partially his fault…</p>
<p>Perhaps the key is when one of the sorority girls (and let’s remember these are sorority girls, so they may be more desperate than most) says that of the 40% men, they’d only consider half. I don’t necessarily blame them, but it’s important to remember they’re artificially excluding a lot of people and then complaining about it. I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest their standards are unreasonably high.</p>
<p>That said, I think it’s ridiculous NOT to consider the social situation when one is applying to college. When evaluating which colleges to apply to and immersing ourselves in the college admissions process (as all of us here on CC are), we tend to look primarily at academic rigor and related things (like small class sizes, great professors, etc.) But we can’t discount the importance of a good social like and good students. After all, once the applicants become students, they’ll be LIVING there for four years. If the academics are great, but the social situation makes you want to kill yourself (or worse, waste your academic opportunities), the college is a bad fit.</p>
<p>As for the ludicrous idea that gender affirmative action (when used against the “wrong” gender) should be illegal, that is asinine. Admissions committees are looking to build a diverse, well-rounded class (as they helpfully tell us as nauseam) so they have a legitimate interest in promoting gender diversity. It would be a problem if a college was admitting no women or no men (except for women’s colleges, of course), but if they’re limiting an over-represented group, they’re probably in the right. We can’t just abandon affirmative action.</p>
<p>"Maybe that is why DS is not concerned (I think) about hooking up with opposite sex.
Either that or the girls are not aggressive enough. </p>
<p>stats: Age nearly 25, engineer, working at large state university, Masters, excellent engineering schools. Saving money. Likes outdoors stuff (hike, bike, foodie, travels, maintains his music. NW location. Absolute requirement: Prospect must accept his Mother. </p>
<p>Go get him, MRS majors."</p>
<p>I am not looking forward to my daughter having a mother-in-law.</p>
<p>My daughter’s read this article and thought it made all college women look like they lacked any morals or self-esteem. To fight over and share a guy, for what? They really cringed when they read they text the guy and usually he doesn’t respond after they spent the night. They also put up with cheating because “they had too”. They said, they might be oddballs in college, but so be it, but I think that might make them more attractive, for better or worse.</p>
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<p>Excuse me!!! As a sorority woman and feminist who attended college to get an education, I find this inaccurate stereotype completely uncalled for.</p>
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<p>Question–isn’t there already a way for a female to avoid the academic dilution of her college experience due to the presence of “less gifted” males by going to an all female institution? Is there any other answer? Doesn’t seem possible to make men smarter.</p>
<p>I have to smile at the image of 3 smart female students looking at the 1 smart male student in a “natural selection” private college. What was that Virginia Slim’s slogan? “You’ve come a long way”</p>
<p>Longprime-- your personal ads for your son crack me up. 
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<p>Unfortunately, my D already has a boyfriend. LOL</p>
<p>I read the article after reading the beginning of this thread, so I was expecting something whiny and hysterical. But after reading it I believed it was describing something real in those young women’s lives – and not blown out of proportion, either. None of them said they wished they were elsewhere; all of them were clearly in college to learn. It’s just . . . like many/most women their age, they want a boyfriend, too (at least the ones who don’t want girlfriends). They aren’t willing to sacrifice much for that – not their educations, certainly – but they are willing to negotiate a bit on the terms and conditions of a relationship. Not that it seems to be doing them any good.</p>
<p>(I was also impressed and affected, I will admit, by the photographs. These were very attractive young women, and not overly dolled-up or trashily dressed, either. They would, or should, pass any boy’s screen for checking them out. I realized that my social expectations were developed in a world where men still predominated; I could not imagine that many great-looking women left to talk among themselves in a non-lesbian college bar on a Friday night.)</p>
<p>A couple of things are worth noting, perhaps. One: How many of them had a choice to go to a college with a more favorable gender ratio? If Carolina is that bad, I would guess that secondary UNC campuses and NC State campuses are no better. Except for wherever the engineering schools are. But men going to different colleges is only a small part of the situation. The big part is men going to the military, jobs, the street, or prison.</p>
<p>Two: The qualities that get one to college in Chapel Hill, or Cambridge, too, do not necessarily correlate with the skills necessary to be a good boyfriend or girlfriend. Even with the right ratios, there are going to be a bunch of problems. My son, for example, is objectively attractive, interested in girls, and tends to value things that girls value (thanks to his goddess-acolyte relationship with his older sister growing up). From the time he was 11 or 12, he has never really lacked for applicants to be his girlfriend. I can vouch for his fundamental morality and kindness, and I have watched (from an appropriate distance) as he turned down painfully explicit (that is: obvious even to a parent) “exploit me” offers. Still, even now, several years into college, he is not mature enough to sustain a relationship, and/or neither are the women who like him. They ARE all focused on other things, and that’s overall a good thing at this point in their lives.</p>
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<p>Last I heard, NC State was well over 60% MALE.</p>
<p>I’m a current student at UNC-Chapel Hill, and most people here are completely baffled by this article. The girl-guy situation isn’t bad at all, particularly when you consider the fact that a) half the girls here are still attached to boyfriends back home and b) the male population of UNC is supplanted by Dukies every weekend who are also looking for girls (“I Hope they Serve Beer in Hell” anyone?).</p>
<p>good for me i want to get into UCLA where there is 44% male and 56% female :)</p>
<p>OK, mom of three boys weighing in although S1 is at one of those colleges that if anything, tilts to more boys (haven’t looked lately). I know for S1 his focus is on college. His focus is on doing things, generally outdoor things, with a group. He’s not “looking” for a “relationship” at all right now in his life. There are many girls that hang out with him and I certainly know that there are girls that are interested in having a relationship with him. It was that way in high school and it’s continuing in college…the group thing. It’s interesting to watch. He thinks girls, in general, are “high maintenance” and want to over analyze everything (in his words to the nth degree.) and he “doesn’t want it”, doesn’t “need it” and “doesn’t have the time” right now. I know because I ask him. </p>
<p>I sometimes wonder, as a female who grew up before Title 9 and when girls were a minority on campuses, if today’s “women” are simply trying too hard. If perhaps they don’t go after the guys with the same velocity they tackle getting all A’s or play their sports? They certainly start young…we had young girls knocking on our door, texting and calling looking for S3 when he was 13. So far, the few girls he has taken to the school dances are very sweet girls. S2 has a girlfriend. I like her and it makes me proud that he has such wonderful taste. </p>
<p>Part of me thinks it’s “cool” that girls feel empowered, after all it was “my generation” that led the charge. I know that girls no longer need to “play dumb” to be considered attractive, in fact my boys definitely find intelligent women more attractive. But in watching my boys and the girls that come around or I know well through friends, part of me thinks that this generation of women just put too much out there: their competitiveness, their sexuality and their angst. The “mystery” is gone and the guys have lost their desire to pursue something that is no longer illusive. Maybe the mystery has flip flopped and the illusiveness is now in the boy court.</p>
<p>My D looked seriously at women’s colleges and then decided not to apply – but not because of the lack of men. She is smart, competent and adorable. But she has always had lots of male friends and I think she’d miss that companionship. Although one school she’s really considering is heavily female and she’s planning to bring some guys around if she goes there. It does matter. Whatever your orientation, the late teens and early twenties is a time for romantic experimentation and interest. That’s a good thing on balance and its absence would be a loss.</p>
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<p>Wasn’t anyone else offended by this? " … I didn’t think I would meet another girl as attractive as her." I personally question the 85 percent divorce rate for those who marry under the age of 25 (which another poster claimed); however, if what young people today are looking for in a partner is the best-looking person who is willing to date them … I would expect the divorce rate to go higher than that. (I choose to believe most young people are smart enough to consider a lot more than looks in choosing a marriage partner.)</p>