<p>OK. I'm not trying to get benefits because I'm a woman interested in engineering, but I am curious. Is it going to help my applications a lot...or is it just a myth that it's really good?<br>
I applied as an intended mechanical engineering major/on some I put aerospace.<br>
I'm mostly curious because there is of course no published stats on a higher percentage or anything (I mean, they say the number of girls v. boys, but they don't say what the acceptance rate is for either specifically)</p>
<p>I know, I've already applied and I can't help myself out anymore now, but I am really curious if it makes that much of a difference, or if I'm just trying to make myself feel better.</p>
<p>btw...does it help getting a job at all? or do they actually discriminate against women in the enginering fields?</p>
<p>A large number of engineering schools treat woman as under-represented minorities and thus give them a favorable factor for admission. How much it helps varies and generally you will still need a high GPA and test score. For example, an MIT admissions officer phrased it as giving the women 20 extra points on the SAT. When the average SAT is something like 2300 at MIT, you can see that being given an extra 20 as a woman does not mean you can come in with low scores.</p>
<p>It can help in getting first employment because there are many employers who also make an effort to hire more women but you still have to do well in college.</p>
<p>alright. I don't expect to get things handed to me, I know that I have to do as well as men do. just curious as to whether it actually does help or not.</p>
<p>I don't think it makes a difference. You'll probably just be hit on by alot of the engineering guys because there's usually more males than females in engineering classes. =)</p>
<p>Special treatment varies by school and the major. At my school, women in ChemE or ME don't really have a distinct advantage yet all the women I know in PetroE have some sort of scholarship. </p>
<p>I'd say it's a pretty big advantage.
For example, a look at MIT's Common Data Set for last year shows an admit rate of ~10% for men, ~25% for women.
Caltech is men ~17%, women ~30%.</p>
<p>seuferk, being a woman, URM, or American citizen can be a significant advantage on the job market in engineering and hard sciences. Go for it and do as well as men!</p>
<p>One could argue that a woman who was interested in math+science to the extent to be even interested in applying to caltech, would be more likely to be successful at math+science.</p>
<p>Alternatively, one could argue that admissions officers at caltech have the extremely tough job of selecting among multiple candidates, all with extraordinary stats (>3.9uw, >4.5w, >2300 sat, etc), for a single place in the freshman class; thus someone with a "hook" like female engineer might get the nod among equally qualified applicants.</p>
<p>So there are a number of very good reasons which would account for increased admission rate without having girls get in over more qualified guys...</p>
<p>A LOT of women who apply to engineering schools self select, which is why there are higher rates for admission. Women will rarely apply to somewhere they think they cant get into, unlike guys. A lot of unqualified guys will apply to schools they know they cant get into, while women will not even apply to that school. Hence, women will have a higher admission rate since a better quality of them applied. </p>
<p>Being a woman in engineering will garner you no extra points, nothing special, its just who you are and you do it because you love it. I did not get into my school since I was female, I got into it because I was just as smart as the rest of the people in my class. I didn't my last job because I was a woman, i got it them because I was talented. I would likely refuse a job if i got it on the basis of an extra chromosome. Yes, you may be getting something from it, but its just as wrong as turning someone away for race. You cant change either of those factors. Some places will discriminate against women while hiring and my advice is if they do, you dont want to be there anyways. If they dont want you when they hire you, do they want to keep you around later? Probably not. </p>
<p>I don't know how college admission works, so I have nothing to add there. But in the industry, employers will not hire women over better qualified men just because they are women. The way it works is they first select candidates who are over the bar--meaning they are in the technical qualification range, and then select from them based on other factors important to the firm, one of which may be gender. So, female hires are never less qualified. That may be different from college admission process, I don't know.</p>
<p>I definitely wasn't trying to imply that a woman will get into a top engineering school over a more qualified male applicant. But I do think that among equally qualified applicants, being a woman can definitely give you an "edge".
I would guess that an overabundance of qualified women apply, just as an overabundance of qualified men apply, so colleges can pick and choose to create an extremely qualified class with a balance of both genders. In total far more men apply than women, and colleges want a diverse student population, so statistically your chances will be much higher.</p>
<p>Companies also seek diversity, but I think the "advantage" of belonging to an underrepresented group is much lower in the job market. Among equally qualified applicants for a given position, I would guess that luck and networking would be the deciding factors, not gender.</p>