<p>What are some top schools for women who want to be engineers?
What are some scholarships available for women engineers?
Is it harder or easier to get in engineering school being a female?
What does it feal like to go to engineering school and be in classes where there are a lot more males than females?</p>
<p>Women have a good shot at just about any engineering school. I know in my school they get scholarships over men, even if they have lower grades. Its just the way it is, they want more women engineers. As far as female/male ratio, depends on your major. For biomed at my school at least there is a 50/50 split male to female, maybe even more females.</p>
<p>Any good engineering school will be good for women.</p>
<p>There are a ton of scholarships/grants avaibable to females just look around.</p>
<p>Affirmative action makes it easier for women to get into engineering schools.</p>
<p>Depends on how you view being around/working with a bunch of guys</p>
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</p>
<p>1) See above
2) See above
3) Definitely easier. Engineering schools are actively trying to recruit more female engineers due to an extreme shortage of them. Case in point, I had a friend (a girl) who is very smart, although she surprised me when she got into every single grad school she applied to (UIUC, GA Tech, Purdue, UVA, Missouri, Baylor) all with FULL funding, and even got offered a fellowship at UVA. My credentials are similar or slightly less (not significantly) than hers, and the schools I applied to are very similar to hers. But I was rejected outright by half of the 6 schools I applied to (Purdue, UVA, Notre Dame (rejects), GA Tech, Clemson, Drexel (accepts).
4) Well, you will be one of the few ladies. In upper level engineering (undergrad) and grad engineering, you are looking at 10%-25% female. You can choose to be "one of the guys" or do your own thing, I've seen both types. From my own observation, people in engineering (male and female) tend to date others outside of engineering.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone!</p>
<p>Throwing in some actual data...</p>
<p>Don't count on affirmative action too much. A lot of high school boys think that it's a huge advantage; once everyone gets to college and gets their butts kicked by their classmates, both male and female, they realise that the whole thing is blown out of proportion.</p>
<p>I saw a study which showed that, while fewer women in high school apply to engineering, those who do have higher GPAs and SAT scores than their male counterparts. Once admitted, they had higher grades than their male counterparts. </p>
<p>I do think that it depends on the school. At some schools, there's enough talented women applying so that they don't need affirmative action, at all. Some other schools might be notoriously unfriendly towards women, but want to recruit more. </p>
<p>I'm in my mid-twenties. When I was 17, I was at the top of my class, had a 1550 SAT, very high SAT IIs, and ten varsity letters. I got rejected from MIT. When I got into my alma mater, people said that it was "only because you're a girl." I'm not sure what part of my application screamed that I needed affirmative action - perhaps my 750 verbal SAT, which was 50 points lower than my math? (If you can't see the sarcasm dripping from the screen....) </p>
<p>Nevertheless, that nonsense ended once we all got to college. We learned fast that everyone there - male or female - was extremely talented. We also learned that professors were going to weed us out. When half the chem class gets a C or a D, you realise that there's no affirmative action on your diploma. You also realise that engineering schools don't admit people who are not qualified, because they'll just get tossed in the weed-out process. </p>
<p>As for actual schools to look at - look for schools with a high percentage of women in engineering (not just women in the sciences); look for schools with good integration with the liberal arts department (as there's then at least women on campus); and schools that send women to good grad programmes. Talk to the junior and senior female engineers to get their take on it. Go with your gut.</p>
<p><em>claps heartily at ariesathena's post</em></p>
<p>We don't have the advantage. Any advantage that is to be had, is had by those who have good grades, good scores, and a well-rounded background. Whether those are women or men is pretty much arbitrary... If you can't hack it at an engineering school, you're not going to get in just because you look pretty. If there <em>is</em> any affirmative action behind the scenes, it doesn't work the way people think... The vibe I get is that programs' admissions offices go, "Hunh... this applicant was president of their high school class, captain of the varsity swim team, was a ten-year veteran of scouting, volunteers at a soup kitchen every Friday, has a 1600 SAT and a 4.0 GPA with all the hardest courses... Oh, hey, and it's a girl... Bonus!"</p>
<p>As to once you actually <em>get</em> there, it feels a little lopsided sometimes. I went to a girls' school for 13 years, K-12, and then went into engineering, and it was a weird switch. Lots of guys. The dynamic of the classroom changed a lot. Girls shut up and guys took over with the class discussion. I don't do well with shutting up ;), so I had to develop some tools to be able to participate in class discussions. My personality changed a little bit so I could integrate myself a little better... like breaking in a new pair of shoes. I developed a bit of a swagger. I got a little louder, so I could actually chip in to conversations and be heard and acknowledged. Any discrimination I've met has either been by previously-reputed jackarses or has been completely unconscious and inadvertant, so I either ignore the jackarses or I let the unconscious stuff slide (if it's getting annoying, I'll mention it to the guy, who'll get very embarrassed and quit discarding my opinion, or let me in on the heavy lifting, or whatever).</p>
<p>Speak up for yourself. Realize that you're not the dumb one, once you get there and start to struggle a bit... Pretty much every gal in engineering that I talk to has, at one point or another, been haunted by the sneaking suspicion that they're actually incredibly lost and dumb, but that they've slipped through the cracks and are still in engineering somehow. Once I became close friends with a bunch of guys in my field, I realized that they feel the same way sometimes, they just handle it differently and it doesn't get to them as much as it gets to the girls.</p>
<p>Good luck, and definitely talk to junior and senior female engineers, as ariesathena recommended, when you go to visit programs. Let us know if you need any other questions answered! =)</p>
<p>aibarr, what kind of engineering did you major in?</p>
<p>Structural for grad, civil for undergrad.</p>
<p>I'm from Texas originally and don't speak with a Southern accent at all, since I'm from Dallas, which is a big city... But when I'm out in the field, I've found that I'm taken a lot more seriously if I affect a bit of a twang and a swagger and say "ain't" a lot more... Construction foremen tend to lend a bit more credence to a swaggering Southern gal who looks like she knows her way around a shovel than to a polished, college-educated, masters-degreed young woman. =)</p>
<p>My girlfriend's Mom, who went to Rice, said that I should go to Rice for Civil Engineering. Rice is expensive - like $13K/semester?</p>
<p>Rice's civ department is in a state of transition right now... Still excellent, still small (about 12 people per year), still lots of good experiences and excellent grad and employment opportunitites, but it's frustrating, administratively and course-scheduling-wise. Just a caveat.</p>
<p>Rice is a lot less expensive than most other private universities... but yeah, about 13K/semester.</p>
<p>
[quote]
When half the chem class gets a C or a D, you realise that there's no affirmative action on your diploma. You also realise that engineering schools don't admit people who are not qualified, because they'll just get tossed in the weed-out process.
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</p>
<p>Well apparently they do admit people that are not qualified if half of the class is getting a C or D. </p>
<p>This example really does not support your claim that there is no affirmative action on your diploma, just because you get the crap beat out of you in your classes doesn't prove that AA doesn't exist. Guys and girls alike have it very hard in engineering programs, and there are girls that do quite well in them too, but just because they are smart/dumb/average (whatever they may be) doesn't not mean that AA doesn't apply.</p>
<p>Besides, at the undergraduate level engineering professors (the ones doing the weeding) aren't really involved in the admissions process. Admissions is handled by an admissions committee who is looking out for AA. I will admit that I believe AA in engineering is more of a problem at the graduate level. Just look at nearly any programs websites, they all have some clause in there saying how this program supports the growth of women/minorities in the sciences and engineering (or something to that effect). Every single REU (although thses are undergrad programs) program has this clause, most companies have a clause similar to this in their literature, and a lot of grad programs that I have seen have this as well. </p>
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[quote]
I'm not sure what part of my application screamed that I needed affirmative action
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</p>
<p>Again, that doesn't prove that AA doesn't exist in the case of minorities and females. Just because you don't need it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. AA is going to help the rich over privileged minorities even though they may not need it, just as it doesn't exist for the poor under privlegd white kid. </p>
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We don't have the advantage. Any advantage that is to be had, is had by those who have good grades, good scores, and a well-rounded background. Whether those are women or men is pretty much arbitrary
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<p>You are kidding me right? </p>
<p>The overally acceptance rate to MIT's ME program is 30.3%, the acceptance rate of women is 42.5%. How is that not an advantage?</p>
<p>A professor that I have spoken with at a very well respcected university openly admits that female student can generally add about half a letter grade (0.2 to 0.3) to their GPA in terms of grad school admissions. On average, this person and others that I have talked to have openly admitted that female students with similar GPAs/experience tend to have more success than their male counterparts. I am not sure that I would agree with all of the comments from this Prof (and I'm sure there are plenty of counter examples) but this is just one experience/perspective that does exist in the field. </p>
<p>Airbarr you are exactly right with this comment</p>
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Oh, hey, and it's a girl... Bonus!"
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<p>And sometimes that is what it takes to differentiate you from the hundreds of nearly perfect applications that admissions committees will see. I would love to have that advantage, regardless of how small you think it is.</p>
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[quote]
Well apparently they do admit people that are not qualified if half of the class is getting a C or D.
[/quote]
LMAO! Someone's not with the programme.</p>
<p>Bio, chem, and physics have fixed scales. No matter what, half the class will get a C or a D. You could admit Einstein reincarnated, Feynman, Marie Curie, and three miscelleneaous Nobel science laureates, and the profs would still give 1/2 of them a C or a D.</p>
<p>So get with it, please. :)</p>
<p>Admissions in engineering tends to be much, much more numbers-oriented than liberal arts. I would ask you to look at the number of URMs in engineering - very, very few. </p>
<p>Admissions RATES don't mean a thing. If Pool 1 is made up of five Nobel laureates, Pool 2 is made up of 10 average high school students, and you admit all 5 Nobel laureates + 1 high school student, does that mean that the Nobel laureates got in under affirmative action?</p>
<p>Stats show that the women who apply to MIT undergrad do so with higher stats. I would hope that, if the pool were more talented, albeit smaller, that a higher percentage would be admitted.</p>
<p>Studies show that women who apply to engineering grad programmes are at a disadvantage. The "identical resume" study showed that professors recommend the "male" student for a Ph.D. programme over 2/3 of the time, while only 1/2 of the "women" students would be recommended. </p>
<p>IMO, there's no point to complaining about affirmative action. If you're qualified and they want you, you're in. If not, you're out. If 1,000 people apply to a school, and the school admits 200 students into engineering and 10 get in from race/gender a.a., the 800 rejected students aren't harmed. Only 10 of them are (those who would be #201-210). I guarantee, however, that every white male among those 800 will cry about a.a. like a 5-year-old girl in a pink dress who got kicked on the playground.</p>
<p>High-five, Aibarr. :) So right about men taking women with a Southern thing seriously. ;)</p>
<p>
[quote]
LMAO! Someone's not with the programme.</p>
<p>Bio, chem, and physics have fixed scales. No matter what, half the class will get a C or a D. You could admit Einstein reincarnated, Feynman, Marie Curie, and three miscelleneaous Nobel science laureates, and the profs would still give 1/2 of them a C or a D.</p>
<p>So get with it, please.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>This is an interesting topic for discussion, one that would take up far too much of my time (that I don't have), but it gets at the heart of why a class was curved/scaled in the first place. To sum up my views, I do not agree with your sentiment that a prof would give 1/2 of a class full of nobel laureates a C or D. I feel that the reason that the scale was instituted was because your average student didn't perform well or was not prepared for a certain class. When the averages on exams are in the 50s and 60s how can you say that the average student actually knows the material? I think stupidity is the culprit for the scale in the first place.</p>
<p>I am a strong proponent of just about all that you have said, equality. On the one hand I complain about AA in colleges admissions, because I do believe that it exists even if it is only to a certain extent, and on the other hand is the entire issue of gender/racial equallity in the workplace, which could also be addressed. This is a very complex topic and is nearly impossible to quantify. I have been told by more than a few faculty members that it is a consideration in the process (and generally favors females) which is more than enough evidence to me to suggest that it does exist, something that discomforts me. To me, AA will always be the crutch that causes society to limp because it considers race/gender as a component of an application. </p>
<p>
[quote]
IMO, there's no point to complaining about affirmative action. If you're qualified and they want you, you're in. If not, you're out. If 1,000 people apply to a school, and the school admits 200 students into engineering and 10 get in from race/gender a.a., the 800 rejected students aren't harmed. Only 10 of them are (those who would be #201-210). I guarantee, however, that every white male among those 800 will cry about a.a. like a 5-year-old girl in a pink dress who got kicked on the playground.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Its the principle of the system. The system you described is skewed to favor someone on the basis of race/gender!!! How can you support such an institution? Should 5% (the same percentage of students affected by AA in your case) of restaurants or supermarkets be allowed to ban African Americans because of their race? Certainly these people would have a right to complain and it would be justifiable. It comes down to the principle of the issue, not the numbers (whether large or tiny) of people involved.</p>
<p>Women do get preferential treatment in engr. programs. They may think they aren't but they are. In my program I have seen girls get scholarships over men, with lower grades and less activities, and no it wasn't a scholarship meant for women, just a general one. </p>
<p>As far as Chem, Bio, etc, at my school its not scaled. You get what you get, and they curve up most grades so more people will pass. Lots of the people I have seen weeded out of my program have been women who couldn't hack the workload. Some were men. Those women who stayed, well a lot of them are very smart and capable. They deserve to be in engineering. The others who quit, didn't deserve all the special treatment they got prior to starting. They had a special summer pre-college thing where they were able to take shortened versions of all the first semester classes, and they STILL couldn't pass them. I don't see special classes for men. They also got free books out of the deal. Mind you this was over 75% of the women who went into the engineering program, and everything was free and catered to them. </p>
<p>Until I see this kind of thing for men I will not believe women don't get special treatment.</p>
<p>as a male engineering student I hereby invite WOMEN to our department....please for the love of god come here.....Im tired of being around guys :(</p>
<p>At UIUC grad in structural, not a single domestic non-UIUC-undergrad woman got a scholarship. I met at least fifteen very cool female candidates at the recruitment weekend for people admitted to the UIUC structures program, and we all agreed that we definitely wanted to end up at UIUC. We were all articulate, we were all at the top of our class, we all were decidedly qualified, but not a single one of us got funding. I was the only one who went back and fought for it, and I was the only one who ended up at UIUC for grad school.</p>
<p>It's stuff like this that makes me scratch my head and wonder a bit whether or not I got gypped just because I've got boobs. Until I quit getting these "you've just been slighted" vibes in various engineering scenarios, I'm going to argue that we don't have it as easy as you guys seem to think we do.</p>
<p>The other thing is: a lot of my female peers in engineering are convinced that they won't succeed in grad school, so they don't even try. It was sad to see, but I couldn't convince a single one of my civ eng female friends at Rice to go on for a graduate degree once we graduated. I imagine that it could quite possibly be the same sort of situation going on with other women, that only the ones who are absolutely positive that they can make it actually apply to graduate school, and then, only the ones who are absolutely sure of their talents apply to MIT, and that's why a larger percentage of women actually get in. Just a hypothesis, nothing behind it aside from my personal experiences in both talking with and being a female engineer.</p>
<p>I hate AA, and I hate the implications that come along with it: that no matter how well I do in my field, I got help, because I'm a woman. I couldn't have done it on my own, I had to have that extra helping hand from admissions committees, because women just ain't smart enough to hack it.</p>
<p>In my AP comp sci course, a guy asked, "Why are those girls in this class, anyhow? They're just going to end up being housewives someday."</p>
<p>In high school, I had to be bussed over to the local boys' school for AP comp sci and AP physics C, because my girls' school didn't offer them... nobody was convinced that calculus-based physics was useful at a girls' school.</p>
<p>When I was a senior, I was co-captain of the robotics team. As we were preparing for a robot head-to-head competition and were seeded against yet another primarily-male team, I heard their captain look at me smugly and say to his team, "This one's gonna be easy... They're just girls."</p>
<p>At a job interview with a premier structural design firm in the country, one of my female cohorts was told, "I know I'm not supposed to ask you this, but you're not going to run off and get married and have a bunch of kids right after we hire you, right?" I got the similar line of questioning at my company conference from one coworker a few weeks ago.</p>
<p>The things I see are NOT help. They are NOT "legs up" in the world of engineering. The things that confront us, as female engineers, more often than not, are not preferential treatment. The things that I see the most of are assumptions that because I have a ponytail and earrings, I'm going to botch the job, or that I've gotten to a place that I don't deserve to be, or that I'm just here to fill a quota.</p>
<p>Do you guys have any idea how frustrating that is? That because of your gender, every time you meet a new colleague, you must prove yourself worthy once again? No matter how far I get in life, I'm always having to re-affirm the fact that I'm here because I've got a talent and passion for engineering, not only to myself, but to everyone around me.</p>
<p>Some days, it's exhilirating to get to kick arse and take names, bash through those preconceptions and change someone's mind about what women engineers are capable of. Other days, the accusations of unworthiness start to get to me. Today, they're getting to me.</p>
<p>spe07, before you set women back a notch at the starting line, assuming that they got there because of affirmative action, remember that you're hoping for equality, and that just as much, we're hoping for equality, too. Nobody wants to be in a situation where they're floundering and they're unprepared... It may look like extra help, but instead, it's setting us up for failure. Most of us just don't want any of that kind of help.</p>
<p>bigndude, where do you go to school? I'm really sorry that you feel that women get put ahead of you guys, but just because you think that we <em>are</em> getting preferential treatment doesn't mean you should assume that this <em>is</em> the case. Perhaps some of the girls are doing better than you think, and that this is why they got scholarships. Maybe it's for reasons other than gender, I don't know, maybe it <em>is</em> preferential treatment at your school, but don't assume that this is the way it is everywhere.</p>
<p>For every leg-up you may see women getting in the engineering profession, there is at least one swift kick to the kidneys. I personally don't believe that I have ever seen any of the benefits of affirmative action, and it haunts me to think that I may have received affirmative action somewhere along the way and haven't realized it, but I <em>know</em> I've seen discrimination. The things you guys are talking about are <em>implications</em> of affirmative action, but I see absolute, concrete <em>evidence</em> of the discrimination that women face. The discrimination hurts, but more than anything, it just makes me mad and more determined. The implication of undeserved laurels makes me sick to my stomach, though, and that's the thing that does nothing more than taint how I feel about my own accomplishments.</p>
<p>For the love of pete, if you've got a problem with how women are treated in your program, please go and talk to an administrator at your school. Ask where <em>your</em> rights are. Ask why <em>you're</em> not getting this type of advantage. Don't take it out, in any way, shape, or form, on those of us who deserve to be here as much as you, because we work our asses off just as much as you do.</p>
<p>Sigh. I need a vacation. Luckily, I leave tomorrow for a week of backpacking in Montana, so if anybody feels the need to tell me what a waste of carbon I am, PM me, because I'm not gonna be checking the forums for a week. Happy fourth, y'all.</p>
<p>I've never heard of such a thing therefore you are lying.</p>
<p>(that message was for bigndude.)</p>
<p>pebbles, i too have unfortunately seen some of the instances that bigndude is refering to at my school.</p>
<p>airbarr, I totally respect your view on things, we are both fighting for the same cause. Like I alluded to in my last post an entirely different issue that could be addressed with this topic is gender equality in the workplace, but the OP was asking about its application to females getting into engineering schools, where I believe I have seen evidence of affirmative action.</p>
<p>The sad fact is though, that there are females who milk into AA, and that is why I feel just as passionately about you ast it. They want all the help they can get (even if they won't admit it on the surface). I know girls at my school who literally have made comments saying that they are glad that they girls so that they can get into better grad schools. The advisors here have literally told them, "don't worry your a girl and you have a 3.6, you'll get into any school (particularly MIT/Stanford)" (mind you that puts you at approximately the 70-80th percentile of the class), while male students go in with 3.8s and are told you will probably get into a few good schools but don't expect to get in everywhere. I have literally seen girls smugly spew this info out with the attitude that they are better than you because of it, and the sad fact is our admissions statistics only verify these claims. </p>
<p>We are who we are and we will each put our own spin on every situation you see. What one calls "implicaitons" another may call "evidence"</p>
<p>I still stand by my premise that AA is the crutch that causes society to limp.</p>
<p>First, aibarr, I'm sorry about all the discrimination you had to endure. I admire your strength and determination. From my own experience, girls that make it to upper level engineering are highly intelligent and motivated, and most of them are near the top of the heap. In fact, they do better than most of their male counterparts. My friend, the aforementioned girl, was a big motivation for me academically, since I wanted to keep pace with her. I highly respect her and don't doubt her abilities for one sec, so did the rest of the guys. </p>
<p>With that said, at least in graduate school admission, it is my contention that given two similarly qualified applicants, one male one female, the female applicant will have a slight edge. This is simply due to the movement to recruit more women into engineering. The merits of the movement is up for debate, I'm simply reporting my own experience and others I've observed.</p>
<p><a href="http://blast.mbhs.edu/college/Puzzle.html%5B/url%5D">http://blast.mbhs.edu/college/Puzzle.html</a>
[quote]
Females who apply to traditionally male-dominated programs such as engineering also may have an advantage. At Lehigh, for example, where 80 percent of the engineering class is male, a woman has, "a slight edge," according to Honsel [Associate Dean of Admissions]. "It's a buzz," he says, "if it's a female engineer--something we'd like more of."
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<p><a href="http://www.admissions.wpi.edu/Women/%5B/url%5D">http://www.admissions.wpi.edu/Women/</a>
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At WPI, as at most technological universities, women are a minority, comprising about 23 percent of our undergraduate population. Still, that's a community of over 600 women and we are working to increase that number (the Class of 2007 is 26 percent female).
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<p><a href="http://www.usu.edu/aaeo/section4.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.usu.edu/aaeo/section4.html</a>
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ENGINEERING STATE: WOMEN AND MINORITY STUDENT RECRUITMENT PROGRAM
(College of Engineering)
Target Group: Women and minority students</p>
<p>Program Description: Each summer the College of Engineering hosts approximately 300 high school juniors on campus for 5 days to give them exposure to USU and the engineering programs. During the visit, students attend challenge sessions, which include hands-on activities with engineering projects. Women and minorities are actively recruited from Utah and Idaho high schools with preference given to those who might not otherwise qualify for participation. The goal is to attract at least 50% of participants as women and minorities.
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</p>
<p><a href="http://www.engr.uiuc.edu/mep/%5B/url%5D">http://www.engr.uiuc.edu/mep/</a>
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The SURGE Fellowship Program is provided by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) College of Engineering. The Support for Under-Represented Groups in Engineering (SURGE) Fellowship Program is a comprehensive package of stipends, service, and activities to recruit persons from under-represented groups into engineering doctoral programs and support them for a maximum of five years... To increase the diversity of the engineering student body, preference will be given to members of one of the following groups under-represented in engineering: women, persons with disabilities, African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, Alaskan Natives, or Native Pacific Islanders.
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</p>