<p>S is looking at some LACs that have many more girls than boys. It certainly seems advantageous for the boys, but does anyone see a downside to this? I'm thinking it could be intimidating, at least in the beginning, to walk into a cafe and see few members of your sex.</p>
<p>It depends on each person of course, but I guess most guys like me are thrilled to be surrounded by girls. </p>
<p>I also think the discrepancy depends highly on interests, not many guys are into traditional learning anymore, they want instant training for careers as professionals.</p>
<p>I had breakfast with a friend today whose son just started at a big, well known, "sporty" university. My son just started at a LAC. </p>
<p>For her kid, the university is fine, but when I heard the SIZE of his classes I nearly fainted. One is 200, two are 300, and one of his classes (a communications class, no less) is all on line! Then I pictured my son, where his largest class is 18. Her kid plays some EC sports through pick up games with kids in his dorm (when he can get enough), whereas my kid has lots of opportunities for organized club and intramural sports. </p>
<p>I don't know, I'm glad he's at a LAC. And he deserves to be someplace with lots of girls - he just came off of six years at an all-boys school (which he loved)! Fortunately, her son is happy too. Different strokes for different folks.</p>
<p>I don't think the imbalance is intimidating as such. It certainly is not intellectually intimidating. But there is an unnatural pressure to pick a girlfriend as all the girls scramble to grab the attractive hetero guys. Not dissimilar to architecture school in the 1970's when all the guys (75%) scrambled to grab the new influx of cute girls (25%). </p>
<p>For the record, my S loves the 200 student classes. He loves to hear a talented professsor speak. He dreaded the Harkness style 15 person "chatty" classes in high school. </p>
<p>As you say...different strokes for different folks. Go figure.</p>
<p>Regarding post #58, understood. I just wanted to provide you and the others with a single datapoint from my son's perspective. When we investigated the 3-2 programs all the ones we saw were BA Liberal Arts, BS Engineering. Though I believe that there may be some out there that are MS, I just hadn't seen them.</p>
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I'm thinking it could be intimidating, at least in the beginning, to walk into a cafe and see few members of your sex.
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<p>To start with, I'm the mother of two boys. But I remember being the only female in a group full of men; I remember being told by the Dean of one grad school that, by choosing not to attend that school I had "messed up their gender balance." When I asked how many men and women the school had admitted, I was told 15--and I was the lone woman. Some gender balance! I remember being told by a fellow grad, that by choosing to go for a Ph.D., I was going to deprive a male breadwinner of not only a job for himself but livelihood for his family. Somehow, he thought I was collected degrees to wallpaper my house.<br>
So now colleges have more women. YAY! I won't shed any tears, not even on behalf of my own boys. Intimidated? The poor dears. :(</p>
<p>Amen, Marite. As only the 2nd woman in 20 years to graduate from my (military) residency program and being told I could never be Chief Resident because "you'll just get pregnant", I have no empathy or tolerance for whining about boys who are no longer in the majority.</p>
<p>And thank heaven for the change in faculty gender stats, Marite. What did it say to me as a female when I began college and there were less than 10 women teaching in the place? Almost all my classes were taught by full profs who were males, although I recall they were trying hard to engage female students into taking their educations seriously and I was encouraged to apply to grad schools, etc. The only time I had female teaching was in introductory courses like Composition. I was just sheepishly remembering that was the Virginia Slims era..when cigarettes could be marketed on the new trendiness of Women's Lib. so that is another change that we can be thankful for...women don't equate smoking with advancement of women's rights anymore. ha</p>
<p>does anyone know the girl:guy ratio in Swarthmore? I really want to go there but i personally would like to see some guys there than girls. I'm not sexist but i'm just more comfortable with them.</p>
<p>Hey, when I told my boss's boss that I was pregnant and so would only be selling for another 4 months he said, and I quote, "But I thought you were a career girl." He then went on to explain that he just wasn't very comfortable working with women...</p>
<p>This was in 1987.</p>
<p>Still, as the mother of a girl, we also looked very carefully at the ratio and D is v. happy about the Princeton boy majority. Look, our job as parents is to help them become happy and productive adults, right? And what are the two things that are key to achieving those goals? 1) Good work. Most people concur college contributes to that. 2) Good mate. So you look at college for its mate potential, or at least its mate finding practice potential. </p>
<p>TutuTaxi, I'd be having the exact same thoughts you are. Sounds like v. sound mothering to me.</p>
<p>Yikes, I never intended to give the impression that I thought it was bad for women to be in the majority in a college. I agree that it is about time that women have gained equal footing, and intelligence and effort should be rewarded regardless of gender. Most women of our generation have experienced discrimination in education and position. It is gratifying that this is changing.</p>
<p>I was really thinking in more social terms. I think it is potentially unsettling for anyone to enter into a situation where they are the minority, as some of you experienced. For a quiet person like my son coming from an all-male HS, it would be a bit of an adjustment attending a predominately women's college. However, I'm sure it would be an adjustment he would be happy to make!</p>
<p>Blizzard, I'm in the same situation as your son (all-male HS), and you're right. I'm looking at Santa Clara University and U Delaware, and their 60/40 ratios were definitely checkmarks in the pro boxes for both of the schools. I know it'll be a little weird, but since I'm planning to study engineering (very-male dominated), I'll still see a lot of guys.</p>
<p>The thread "Unfounded Concerns...", some mothers and D's have commented about the male/female ratio and college selection will be limited to a male ratio of no less than 43-45%.</p>
<p>Now I'm a analytical type of guy and I always wonder about how one comes to a conclusion-In this question, Is a 40/60 - male/female advantageous to us males:</p>
<p>If out of these ladies (10% =6): 6 are Princess's, 6 are B's, 12 are already hookedup, 6 don't like the opposite sex, 6 are too old, 6 are too young, 6 are career minded (more like 12), 6 are d*gs, 6 are too pretty... There remains ZERO females that are dateable for the (us) 40% males! </p>
<p>I guess I was lucky in finding S's mother. But the ratio then was 55/45 and many of us were fighting a war, else the ratio would've been 60/40.</p>
<p>Marite & QuiltGuru, anent the "good" old days, TheMom was pretty cutting edge about bringing technology into the work place, purchasing one of the early Mac's for her office. She pushed that now-ludicrous computer the way some folks push a sports car and wound up doing her departmental budgets on it. When she turned them in, her boss said, "These are very nice...did your husband do them for you?"</p>
<p>You know, I continue to function in an overhwelmingly male-dominated environment. I can do it. I know some women who were the first female students to be admitted to Yale. Talk to me about being uncomfortable.<br>
Maybe some boys should be more in touch with their inner Mars instead of behaving as if they were Ophelias? Just talking pop psycho babble here. No sympathy for me, sorry.</p>
<p>In my company, at my level, there are 5 women (including myself) and 25 men. What happened to the women? The overwhelming majority dropped out, on their own, to raise families. They were not fired or denied promotion. This is a wonderful choice for women who can afford it, but I wish these highly educated women had chosen to rejoin the work force at some point when their kids were in school most of the day. The fact is, they didn't. I have a high school senior and the majority of my female peers where I live do not work. They almost all have law or business degrees. Interestingly the women who became doctors do still work, though often with limited hours (making this a good field for women). It is a strange world where the girls work so hard in high school to get into the top colleges, all with dreams of becoming this or that, and then it is the same highly educated women who opt out of the work force permanently. (I understand when the kids are young, of course) I don't know why this is happening but at least in the Northeast it is an oft repeated phenomenom.</p>
<p>From what I've seen, the highly educated women don't opt out of working permanently. They return when their kids are in high school or college. At a time in which many men are scaling back, many women are gearing up their careers. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, those highly educated women who leave the work force when they have children are wonderful assets to schools' parent organizations and are able to provide real oversight, not just freshly baked cookies.</p>
<p>You cannot practice medicine without patients; you cannot do so by staying home with the kids. I suspect that many women who "drop out" from careers in business or law will go sooner or later into consulting or starting their own companies. They're too driven to spend their time shopping, however competitively some of them do.</p>