<p>enomo67…
That was a very passionate post number 37 about how un-meritocratic the process is and how you are a person who has suffered from it, you are not just a number, etc.
Then I read your previous posts about your travails and read that your pain was being rejected from Yale, despite your LEGACY status.
How in good conscience can you write a post like that?
Welcome to the world of most of the rest of us, who have to make it under our own power.
Poor dear. Having to go to Pomona.</p>
<p>Actually, I believe the root cause of the gender problem is in elementary school. I remember reading an article once, I think in Newsweek, that was talking about education. There was a quote from one person when asked about the differences in academic success between boys and girls before college. He said something along the lines of that elementary school is a much more “girl-friendly” environment than high school. Because of this, the guys lose interest much more quickly.</p>
<p>Really, think about it. By far, there is a greater ratio of female elementary teachers than male ones. Elementary school dominated with less active activities. In high school, classes have science labs, performances, and other projects to demonstrate creativity. That is a big contrast to elementary school, where besides recess, everything else is through books. There is scientific evidence that girls learn better while sitting, and boys learn better while standing up. This is only during elementary school, of course. I think if we want to see improvement in the academic achievement of men, we have to start at the beginning. BTW, I’m a guy.</p>
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<p>It’s actually kind of tough to get wrapped up in numbers when people seem to be making a conscious effort to avoid discussing them.</p>
<p>guess what, people. I think if anything, this is completely twisting the story. Do you how much harder it is to get into Wharton Business as a male than as a female? Almost friggin’ impossible. Thank god I go to an all-male school. Don’t want any more competition. We are talking normal, good, decent American guys getting shut out of their own schools because their sisters have determined to take over the educational establishment.</p>
<p>Right, these articles also don’t give any numbers for business and engineering programs, which are still male-dominated and where female applicants almost certainly face lower standards.</p>
<p>For anyone interested, this article has been written yet again:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1727693,00.html[/url]”>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1727693,00.html</a></p>
<p>I would like to point out that I think I got an easy in to Rensselaer BECAUSE I am a woman. The door swings both ways. Many colleges that I applied to are trying to get more women in to engineering fields, and thus I think it is actually easier to apply if you are a woman.</p>
<p>For those of you who read the Time Magazine article posted above, or who already know of these matters from other sources, I am curious of your opinions. Do you think that most women will go along with preferences for males because they want a coed college environment? </p>
<p>How much preference is acceptable and for what kind of balance of genders? If some day it means it is TWICE as hard for a woman to get in to keep the numbers of men and women in balance, would you accept that? Or is there a limit (e.g., 20% advantage but not 50%?). </p>
<p>How far do you think things will get out of balance given the trends we have seen with girls significantly and increasingly outperforming boys in schools and other college bound activities?</p>
<p>Do you think male graduates will be seen as less capable because they got affirmative action as men? Will workplaces also have to give male graduates special consideration or will the need for maximizing profits lead to more women than men over time in more occupations?</p>
<p>For more reading see the article a year ago in the New York Times on the “amazing girls” of Newton High School:
<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/education/01girls.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/education/01girls.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all</a></p>
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<p>What advantage are they getting now? There’s no evidence at all that schools are actually lowering their standards to admit men, which is kind of astonishing considering how many of these articles have been written. You’d think they could find at least one school where the average SAT for females was higher and pretend it was representative of a larger trend.</p>
<p>There was quite a long discussion here about the “Amazing Girls” article when it was published.
Many of the posters felt the girls were privileged and not so amazing, given some of the college results. My own feeling is that the author was over-wowed by the educated parents and the seeming unlimited financial resources of the community.</p>
<p>I think people take admissions statistics at face value. Although there may be a 60/40 proportion of applicants to an Ivy that takes 51/49, this does not necessarily mean that women are somehow smarter, or are the victims of a chauvinist anti-meritocracy. </p>
<p>As mentioned before, elementary school and middle school are not male-friendly places. How many male elementary school teachers did you have? One, if that? Same with me. In elementary school you learn how to have neat handwriting and read and make cute little art projects. That’s pretty much the extent of elementary education in the US (and the problems with this go beyond a gender gap). All of these things are undoubtedly geared towards females. Males, particularly at a young age, are not going to have meticulous organizational skills, and take slightly longer to learn to read. They will fall behind. They may be able to scrape by because of the urgings of parents, but the curriculum is not geared towards these males, and they are behind in spite of a lack of obvious disparity in grades. </p>
<p>Then, they hit middle school, usually in 6th grade around age eleven. Around this time, most girls are starting to go through physical and mental maturity, and are more able to transition to their new environs. 6th grade males are still, for all intensive purposes, still little kids for the most part. Middle school is where a lot of boys get lost. Elementary/middle school years are one’s formative years, where habits are created and high school is prepared for. Men are at a distinct disadvantage going into high school, and I think for the most part at this point the gap doesn’t widen or shrink significantly. So, basically, I think it’s clear that males lose ground before high school (due to their fault and the fault of educators), and thus do not have the work habits that girls the same age have.</p>
<p>I also think it’s very fair to say that females are more acclimated to the current college admissions standards. A successful applicant needs to maintain a high GPA with a course load that he or she can barely handle, score highly on standardized tests, and juggle a plethora of extracurricular activities. Women can multitask, men have one-track minds. Obviously the difference isn’t so cut-and-dry, but there are distinct physiological differences in the way men and women approach their work. I know some of my male friends attack homework by going all-out on one subject for one day, while I’m able to have everything spread out on my desk and make a little headway in every subject every day. Women are more organized in school, and when kids applying to top schools are supposed to take an incredibly daunting courseload, women are better suited for the challenge.</p>
<p>I also think it is fair to say that women are more likely to be involved in school and community service organizations, while men are more likely to find their passions in an area that doesn’t shine on a college application.</p>
<p>Is there a slight disparity? There certainly might be. But it is not dramatic as some ardent feminists make it, and more than anything suggests an error in the educational system. Something similar was happening to girls around 30-35 years ago, and the system changed, and now they have soared to the top.</p>