<p>What's it like being part of a minority gender at a school where the overwhelming majority of people are of the opposite sex? It is awesome, as prurient males would say? Or is it boring, as many would assume?</p>
<p>I don’t know of any schools with such an innately lopsided gender balance. Admissions departments usually keep it pretty close to 50:50.</p>
<p>The only exception that I could think of could be going to Haverford College (co-ed) and taking some shared courses at Bryn Mawr college (all-girls)</p>
<p>^^Caltech is pretty heavily male. Same with the service academies. Plus, I haven’t seen the numbers, but I think some of the former women’s colleges that have gone coed still tend to be majority female even though they have been coed for years.</p>
<p>There are definitely some schools that are closer to 60/40 or even 70/30. And that could be for men or women. MIT, Vassar, and Caltech com to mind as having an imbalanced male/female ratio. Many LACs have more women than men. Actually, even a lot of universities have significantly more women than men. But at most places, this won’t be a problem.</p>
<p>MIT is not that imbalanced, it has been around 55/45 in recent years.</p>
<p>I have heard, from people at schools that are very imbalanced in either direction, that it can get awkward for people in the minority because they are, erm, in such demand, so they can end up with more attention than they really want. However, I’ve also heard from people who didn’t find it a problem or odd at all.</p>
<p>MIT is one of the more balanced schools. If I were a female high school senior interested in the STEM fields, I would definitely consider MIT.</p>
<p>Nationally, 57% of college students are female, so a 60/40 split is much more common than 50/50. At technology schools, the breakout is dramatically in the opposite direction. Georgia Tech, Rensselaer, and Worcester Polytech are all between 70-75% male. Women’s colleges that have recently gone coed may be skewed just as much - Sarah Lawrence, for example, is 73% female. I would think that at a school that’s not a designed single-gender institution, anything over a 2:1 split would create an odd dynamic on campus.</p>
<p>True. There are currently more women in college in the U.S. than men.</p>
<p>When my older sister looked at Caltech, she was told that she’d never lack for a date! They said that even the borderline-attractive ladies would have lots of dates. ;)</p>
<p>When I was in engineering school many years ago, the school ratio was 4:1 when I started (shrunk to 5:2 over the four years) and the ratio in my major was 10:1. I found that the imbalance created all sorts of strange social situations. My friendships were mostly with men, because most of the students were male. (I am female.) Twice I had male friends really flip out on me because of strange expectations – angry with me for not dating them, when they never even asked me out. What could you expect when I might be the only woman they had talked to in a month? Most of the women I knew got into close monogamous relationships quickly. A few went the other way and were promiscuous. If a guy on my floor brought a female lab partner back to work on a project, he’d have six guys crowding his doorway to see her. Maybe some of the strangeness came from the general geekiness level of the student body, but a lot was due to the gender imbalance. I don’t think it’s desirable to be in that much demand! Certainly it is a factor in choosing the right college experience for you.</p>
<p>I believe American has a 2:1 girl to guy ratio.</p>
<p>And of course girls at female-heavy schools are disappointed to find out that within the limited number of guys at their school, around 10% of them (“all the cute ones”) are gay.</p>
<p>“They said that even the borderline-attractive ladies would have lots of dates.”</p>
<p>Only if they like pocket protectors. :rolleyes:</p>
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<p>As the Georgia Tech coeds like to say, “The odds are good, but the goods are odd.”</p>