Women in Engineering

<p>I am a girl who is planning on becoming an environmental engineer (major in civil and then environmental for grad). If a girl applies to the engineering program in a school, would that raise her chances considerably more than one applying as a major for English or psychology, for example?</p>

<p>Yes, in most schools being female raises your chances of admittance considerably.</p>

<p>It'll depend on the school, though, and possibly even the department.</p>

<p>At many (but not all) universities, women are considered under-represented minorities for engineering and receive a plus factor in consideration for admission as a result. However, you should not assume that necessarily means it is easier to be admitted than to English or other Liberal Arts & Sciences majors. Usually, the middle 50% ranges for class rank/test scores for engineering at a university are significantly higher than the ranges for LAS, example: Illinois, LAS middle 50% range is often top 18% to top 5% class rank and 26 to 30 ACT; engineering middle 50% range is often top 10% to top 3% class rank and 30 to 33 ACT. The URM consideration for engineering means you have a better chance than usual of being admitted if you are in the lower end of those ranges but the lower end for engineering is the higher end for LAS. An MIT admissions official once describe the factor as like adding 20 points to your SAT score, but when you consider that the average SAT of a student to MIT is probably 2250 or higher, adding only 20 points does not mean you can get in with a score that is much lower than that.</p>

<p>I'm a girl planning to be a computer engineer, and I definitely think that being a girl helps with admission to engineering school.</p>

<p>It helps less, I think, at a school where you can freely switch between engineering and liberal arts, where they are aware that people who think they have an advantage applying to engineering will do so and then switch out as a ploy to get into the liberal arts college. At a place where the engineering school is separate and you can't just transfer - like, say, Columbia University - it helps more, because they know you're definitely going to be in engineering.</p>

<p>In my country women get more points for the engineering studies than men.(Everything is based on getting points, the better grades, the more points).
But the sadest thing are wth the jobs, girls are allmost guaranteed a job as en engineer.:(</p>