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It’s not about what every woman wants. It’s about what every woman gets from the experience. In retrospect, there are tons of women in the world who experienced only coed education that was nonetheless tremendously liberating and amazing preparation for the world. (Especially LACs, which all women’s colleges are and thus should be compared to. Comparing women’s colleges to the “national average” is like comparing Swarthmore to Penn State on who eats dinner at their professor’s house more often: they are wholly different types of education.)</p>
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What percentage of women attending coed LACs (not all schools, mind, just LACs) state that they wish they had gone to a women’s college instead? Do women’s colleges have higher retention rates than their academic (not admit-rate) peers?</p>
<p>Quick browse tells me that freshman retention rates at Middlebury and Wellesley (equally ranked by USNWR) are identical, at 96%. Bryn Mawr is 93%, while Haverford is 96%. Not conclusive data, but certainly not higher than their coed peers.</p>
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I changed one word in the above quote and it is absolutely, entirely true for me at Swarthmore, an LAC that has been coed since its founding. (And I have a BF who lives in the same dorm as me. He is amazingly, truly blind when it comes to bad hair.) It doesn’t matter to me one whit whether I do stupid stuff in front of a guy versus in front of a girl.</p>
<p>I agree wholeheartedly that women’s colleges are worth considering; I suggest them to all of my female friends who are considering coed LACs, because the educational value is significantly higher than at a coed college of comparable admit rate. But that doesn’t mean they’re right for all women, or even most women. They are right for some women.</p>