<p>I went to kindergarten at a public school. We moved and I tranferred to a private school where I was automatically put in the "dumb" class because I came from a public school.</p>
<p>After a few months, I felt perfectly comfortable there, in fact, I decided that it would be quite easy to 'lock' all the girls in the girl's bathroom--by jamming the toe of my shoe under the door and wedging it like a doorstop.</p>
<p>Pandemonia and high pitched screaming erupted in the bath, as wee girls tried to get out and couldn't.</p>
<p>Suddenly, I was lifted into the air by the back of my collar (happened several times during my primary school career). My first grade teacher was livid.</p>
<p>Her eyes narrowed and she hissed, "Your mother thinks you are a little angel, but you're not!"</p>
<p>My mother thinks I am an angel? In my dreams! </p>
<p>My mother scolded me up and down for organizing games for twenty children inside her house. She was upset because I would organize the game, get the children going and bugger off to some other adventure. (My mother had six children. She really didn't need another twenty in the house).</p>
<p>See? You only WISH you had creative children. ;)</p>
<p>Just a piece of info to the OP: this years' freshman class at Swarthmore is 50.9% female and 49.1% male. So the administration must be happy this year.</p>
<p>For the schools where the enrollment is so skewed toward more women, I am assuming it is because more women apply with better grades - actually, more women probably apply, period (certainly true at Vassar, which would love more boys).
To Private Joker: I don't see getting into college as a measure of women's success. It is just 4 more years of school their parents and they pay for. I think women's success has to be measured by how many good jobs they hold in their fields. There are still many more male partners in law firms, banks, business, govenrment, etc., no matter where anybody went to school.</p>
<p>Swarthmore is one of the few LACs that has an engineering school, similar to Bucknell. I wonder what the percentages would look like without the engineering school. If you have access to the information please post.</p>
<p>A relevant datum came my way the other day: at UCLA, 63 percent of undergrad Letters & Science students are female. Only the School of Engineering, which is still dominantly male, is keeping the undergrad sex ratio anywhere near balanced.</p>
<p>It's really weird though. 2 of my friends got rejected last year, one from Providence and one from Vasssar with decent stats and supposedly they are looking for guys. Happened with a couple of people the year before too. I think that there are so many high level girls applying that colleges are willing to become gender uneven to keep their stats up.</p>
<p>I don't know how much of girls' authority pleasing is socialization-- a lot of girls just <em>are</em> that way, particularly if they are first born (speaking from experience).</p>
<p>I also think there are ways to channel that 'tendency to comply and be good' into productive, effective behavior that integrates well into the more rough-and-tumble work environment. </p>
<p>It's similar to how boys' testosterene-fueled aggression and hyper-competitiveness can be <em>channeled</em> into productive work and achievement, instead of stagnating in self-destructive violence, etc.</p>
<p>I'm a girl who was sweet, shy, basicially compliant and consciencious. I ended up in law, writing aggressive briefs and making assertive arguments (the ultimate goal was to do good, but 'crushing the other side' in the adversarial spirit of the law is certainly a factor!) It's certainly possible to be effective in a male-dominated profession without being a born-h*ll-raiser. :-) </p>
<p>In fact many experienced attorneys (male and female) have told me that the most successful women lawyers are the ones who aren't excessively strident and overtly attack-oriented.</p>
<p>The Engineering Department at Swarthmore only accounts for 3% to 5% of the majors in recents years. So it is not a significant contributor to the gender ratio. I'd be more inclined to look to the impact of the school's largest department, Economics, since so many boys now dream of growing up to be investment bankers.</p>