<p>It really depends on what a person wants in a school. I am female and am a Cornell Engineering Computer Science grad. I was looking for diversity (didn't want a tech only school) and it mattered less to me that there were fewer womem in my major. Also, at Cornell not sure about other schools, CS was offered through the College of Arts and Sciences as well as through the College of Engineering. More women were in the former program. For me, this was a good balance and most of my female friends were not engineers, and most of my male friends were classmates from my major.</p>
<p>jackief-
Out of curiosity, are you an INTERNATIONAL female engineering student? My impression is that almost all of the undergrad female engineering students at Cornell are also internationals, with some Asian-Amer. I think this is generally true. Female engineering students tend to be international students or Asian-American (India, Pakistan, Middle East, China).</p>
<p>I also think females generally gravitate to chemE, industrial, biomedical. There weren't many in ECE. (They also seemed to have more fun in those depts chemE esp. They were more social, males and females.)</p>
<p>By the way, above is also true of male eng students but maybe more so for females.</p>
<p>University of Rochester 127 11.1% 1420 50 80</p>
<p>can you tell me about the rank of south dakota school of mines and technology?</p>
<p>"It has a relatively low percent engineering and comp sci for such a great engineering school."</p>
<p>Collegehelp, 15% is not a low percentage for a non-techie school. If you are going to compare Northwestern to Caltech, CMU, GT, HMC or MIT, then yes, 15% may sound low. But if you compare it to other "similar" universities with elite Engineering programs, such as Cal, Cornell, Michigan, Princeton, UIUC or Stanford, 15%-20% of the total undergraduate population majoring in Engineering/CS is about right. </p>
<p>And I think you should compare statistics within the College of Engineering, not for the entire university. Graduation rates for Engineers, and the percentage of female students in Engineering programs are generally significantly lower than they are for the rest of a university. For example, at Michigan, 23% (compared to 52% for the rest university) of undergraduate Engineers are female and 80% (compared to 90% for the rest of the university) of Engineers end up graduating within 6 years. Thjose are significant gaps that you will find at other universities.</p>
<p>I agree with your point about Northwestern, Alexandre.</p>
<p>I also agree that engineering schools generally have a substantially smaller proportion of women (Smith is an exception).</p>
<p>Generally, the larger the proportion of engineers on a campus, the smaller the overall proportion of women. So, for example, WPI is about 75% engineers and 25% women overall. This makes for a different environment and experience. At a school like Michigan, the percent women in engineering is 23% but the overall percent women is 52% and so the social environment is more like most other colleges. </p>
<p>The overall percent women has a more important impact on the social environment than the percent women in engineering specifically. But, both affect the social experience.</p>