Women with an UG Engineering Degree in 2001: 19.1% -- In 2013: 19.1%

College Majors Engineering Majors
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Up-thread I mentioned engineering schools for “the rest of us,” as in you or your child are not a shoe-in for MIT, Mudd, Olin, etc. And really, even in the rarified world of CC, that’s most of us. It’s too late for my family, but if you are a prospective engineering student without a tippy-top profile and would like to put your time and money towards a school that is doing better than the national average <20% women for their graduating class, here ya go:

School, Degrees Awarded to Men, Degrees Awarded to Women (in 2015), % Women
Boston University, 214, 90, 29.6%
Bucknell, 96, 51, 34.7%
Case Western, 243, 89, 26.8%
Clemson, 639, 183, 22.3%
Clarkson, 304, 69, 18.5%
Colorado Mines, 661, 256, 27.9%
Florida State, 278, 80, 22.3%
George Washington 69, 49, 41.5%
Georgia Tech, 1468, 517, 26%
Kettering, 187, 49, 20.8%
Layfayette, 105, 39, 27.1%
Lehigh, 344, 131, 25.6%
Missouri Tech, 804, 191, 19.2%
North Carolina State, 1120, 227, 16.9%
Northeastern, 397, 115, 22.5%
Ohio State, 1173, 310, 21%
Penn State, 1322, 302, 18.6%
Rensselaer, 499, 171, 25.5%
RIT, 396, 87, 18%
Rose-Hulman, 317, 98, 23.6%
Santa Clara, 143, 47, 24.7%
Stevens, 311, 100, 24.3%
Stony Brook University, 575, 163, 22.1%
SUNY Binghamton, 334, 73, 17.9%
Syracuse, 252, 78, 26%
U of Texas Austin, 882, 253, 22.3%
Tulane, 45, 25, 35.7%
Union, 53, 11, 17.2%
UC Davis, 549, 160, 22.6%
UC Irvine, 501, 145, 22.4%
UC San Diego, 923, 275, 22.9%
UC Santa Barbara, 283, 44, 11%
U of Connecticut, 383, 116, 23.2%
U of Florida, 929, 288, 23.7%
U of Georgia, 62, 16, 20.5%
UIUC, 1683, 329, 16.4%
U of Miami, 196, 69, 26%
U of Michigan, 1121, 342, 23.4%
U of Minnesota, 758, 147, 16.2%
U of Notre Dame, 243, 106, 30.4%
U of Pittsburgh, 438, 119, 21.4%
U of San Diego, 55, 19, 25.7%
U of Tulsa, 142, 35, 19.8%
U of Virginia, 449, 205, 31.3%
U of Wisconsin, 656, 157, 19.3%
Villanova, 163, 65, 28.5%

Methodology: Searched NCES with these parameters: 25th percentile admitted students have a combined ACT score between 26-32, school has a greater than 20% acceptance rate, and engineering degrees are offered. Then, I cross referenced the results with ASEE’s graduation numbers broken down by gender for 2015. (http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/ & http://profiles.asee.org/)

Potential trends that interest me: schools considered liberal arts that happen to have engineering appear to have the best balance (but very small numbers overall). STEM schools that don’t have the variety of majors to “hide behind,” thereby making the gender imbalance more obvious, appear to have a SLIGHTLY better balance than big public schools. Finally, the average of all the schools listed would not lead you to guess the national average is 19.1% per data that originally lead to this thread. My guess is that means the further you go down the selectivity food chain for colleges the lower the pecentage of women. Probably nothing we couldn’t have all guessed, but as an old boss used to say, “In God we trust. All others bring data.” Conversely, a favorite quote of my math teacher husband is, “There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.”

Fun fact: my daughter’s final two choices were Northeastern and Stevens. She choose NU for a number of reasons, including that it didn’t feel so “bro heavy,” but per the numbers above, Stevens actually has a better gender balance in engineering.

182

Be careful with overall selectivity information. In some of the schools in this selectivity range which admit directly to the major, engineering majors are more selective than the overall school. In some of the other schools, students are admitted to a pre-engineering program and must compete by college GPA in a secondary admission process later to get into their majors.

Also, ACT scores alone may not give the full picture of selectivity, if some schools over or under emphasize ACT scores (or attract applicants who mainly use SAT instead).

183

Yep, methodology might have been the wrong word. Let’s go with “a simplified version of figuring out what the next tier down schools MIGHT be because your ol’ friend palm715 is to cheap to pay for the USNWR extra content that would show real rankings” instead. :slight_smile:

184

Is it fair to assume that the acceptance rate into engineering is quite a bit lower at most schools or is that peculiar to the UCs? The UCB CoE is slightly above half the overall rate and UCSB is about 15% acceptance for engineering. UCLA engineering is about 13%. Just curious.

185

Also women prefer biomedical, chemical engineering, so schools with strong Biomed programs like Case Western will attract more women engineers than a school that is predominantly directed to mechanical or electrical engineering or computer science.

I think lack of women in college is not that bad, or even noticable if you attend a big school … but there is definitely a lack of women in industry …, I don’t think the bro comments would occur if a woman was sitting in 40% of the seats in the meeting, but it is not unusual for meetings to be 90% or higher male … especially higher level meetings, where there might be a woman manager, a single technical engineer, and a few women putting out donuts.

Retention is not good among women engineers, which is why even good years from recruiting actual women engineering graduates haven’t really changed the numbers out in industry. Women who quit engineering after 10 years are then not at the senior level meetings, are not role models and mentors for young women coming out of college. Being in a meeting with 90% old men is intimidating … and the young men may be intimidating too (and some of them are outright afraid of women … they are engineers to avoid females !).

I will say that my alma mater Rutgers had a separate campus for STEM that was probably 2/3 male. I think this accounts for having too few women friends in college, which was not great. Having women engineering friends is even better, since you can form study groups and make sis comments about all the bros …

During the earlier period of discussion, I posted a good report from AAUW that goes into a lot of the comments we are making here. Some were not obvious to me, or I had the wrong idea, or I was about 30 years behind in my thinking.

http://www.aauw.org/files/2013/02/Why-So-Few-Women-in-Science-Technology-Engineering-and-Mathematics.pdf

I found the idea of improving spatial reasoning by using CAD to be an excellent one … yes, I have done that (and I tested above average for human and off charts for woman in my teens). I am now an ME.

I have been to outright silly women in engineering programs …rah, rah, become an engineer. Women at high school age who can easily become engineers need some demos and some women who have excelled in their field, not the same as say a group of 3rd graders.

Math in middle school is not really the problem, there are hundreds of thousands of women who are capable and ready to study engineering in college.

I think we also need lots and I mean tens of thousands of MEs and EEs women a year to even the stats. the niche engineering fields just don’t have enough graduates to change the overall odds.

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Regarding engineering as a way to make money, I think back 25 years ago, there was a real drive for men to become engineers so they could support a family … and maybe this is still the case. Rutgers had lots of blue collar family students who would grind away 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, since engineering was seen by them and their families as a way to middle or higher class.

Women may think that income is not as important, but with high divorce rates and with high cost of living and two-income families … yes it does matter whether income 2 is $50K or $120K.

The idea of important work, meaningful work is a bit new to me … i kind of think everyone wants that but also a stable paycheck and a good life (or you spend a year in Africa building water systems with your savings from stable engineering job or give $$ to charity or whatever).

I think the idea of art as part of engineering has some merit … but you have to find the numbers to be interesting. If you want to design pretty things, not efficient things or 5% improved things, you are probably better off in graphics art or marketing or even management or money …

But I am in the boy’s side of engineering …

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@PickOne1

I couldn’t help noticing that you are in ME.
This might be off the topic, but would you mind if I ask you what kind of work do you do?
Do you see any benefit in getting ME/EECS combo?
My kid is currently pursuing ME (he thought it’s a bit too theoretical).
Recently, he’s drawn to EECS and thinking about doing dual major.

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Thank you for your great insights, @justpick1 . I remember your link earlier but saw “129 pages” and decided to forgo it. I will definitely make the time to read it today. Do you do any mentoring? The tone and content in your posts leads me to believe you would be an excellent one.

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It is probably fairly common at popular state flagships that engineering majors are more selective than others at the school (whether at initial admission, or competitive secondary admission). Texas, Virginia Tech, UIUC, Washington come to mind. Even some private schools may have different thresholds for engineering majors (perhaps Cornell, CMU, USC).

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@StevenToCollege EEs seem like a different breed to me … but there are some areas or similarity like electromechanics … I would encourage your son to discuss with his professors, even via email over the summer, to see how he can combine his interests into a good degree he can complete in 4 years. There is always the option of a masters in another field (I went from ChE to ME) … or taking on a role at work that combines both interests.

Also look for companies that are working on products with both ME and EE flavor. CS … computers are everywhere … that is even a bit further from my personal interests.

Personally, since ME products are concrete objects in 3D … and EEs are electrons moving around hidden from view … and the use of imaginary numbers … I think ME is less theoretical, but everyone is different (and schools vary wildly in how they teach and what they focus on).

Yes, I should be mentoring … I have trained, mentored lots of engineers … but not in my current job … and not that many were women engineers, again you can’t hire women who aren’t there (and many leave in their late 20s early 30s for family reasons). I am mentoring my D …

UMd accepts only the best students for direct admit into engineering, it is limited enrollment. So, top 5% can get into COE, top 10% accept to UMd-CP. But to their credit, with a reasonably high GPA in engineering required classes, you can transfer in at any time … not competitive, just get the GPA / grades. Personally, if you can’t get say a 3.0 in your freshman classes, engineering is going to be a very hard journey and you may thank the school for having you avoid the pain for a year and the transfer to business degree with a 2.5 GPA …

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@PickOne1

Thanks for sharing your experiences, really appreciated.
I will be sure to forward your post to my kid.
He’s currently a freshman, and so perhaps the ME class that he’s taking now is a bit dry.
I told him to hang in there, and hopefully he will get more exposure to hands-on experience when he gets to upper-division classes.

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“Do you see any benefit in getting ME/EECS combo?” - At most schools, dual majors are tough. (See other related threads on minors / double majors). It would probably be better to pick one and then take electives in areas of interest.

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@youcee Certainly for my D and her friends, most schools with separate engineering applications (either to a separate school or individual major) said their acceptance rates were lower than the school’s main LA/AS college. Most of the time the engineering schools were much smaller (ie. had less admits) as well and the average stats were higher. Some schools actually break out the apps and admissions so you can search indvidually, but many don’t.

If you are asking in terms of a kid applying in the next year or two, it is something to be very careful/well educated about. Two of D’s academically strong friends found themselves with really limited options after they failed to “handicap” their admission chances for the engineering schools and went off the more general school stats. My D found she really had to change how she looked at schools, both for the individual programs (not all engineering schools are created equal) and chances of admission.

194

@calidad2020 “If you are asking in terms of a kid applying in the next year or two, it is something to be very careful/well educated about.”

Increasingly parents and students are coming to understand the importance of a major over the school. In many cases there is a big difference in degree of difficulty (gpa and test scores) to be admitted to a school for engineering and being admitted for an out of favor major.

195

@Much2learn Yep. and for folks like me who were well informed about a lot of LA/AS programs, but less so the engineering side of things there was a pretty steep learning curve. We were lucky in that we have a couple of friends who knew a lot, but it is a fairly different application environment. And if your kid is lucky enough to think they know somewhat specifically what they want to study, they can really hone in on individual schools. For our D, for instance, ability to do some art and to study abroad was important. Both those things are possible in many engineering schools, but once she drilled down “beyond the brochure” to the practicals it was clearly easier is some programs than others and that affected some of her applications.

196

@youcee, you don’t have to guess! :slight_smile: In terms of stats and the admit rate, the site I mentioned earlier, the American Society of Engineering Education (http://profiles.asee.org/), gives the admission numbers and stats just for engineering (but it does not break down admissions by gender).

Example: The University of Texas at Austin - 2015

Engineering:
13,362 students applied
3,376 of those were admitted (25.3% admit rate)
Mid 50% SAT for enrolled freshman
1920-2180
Mid 50% ACT for enrolled freshman
30-34
Percentage of entering students ranked in the top quarter (25%) of their high schools: 99%

Common Data Set for entire university:
43,592 students applied
17,006 of those were admitted (39% admit rate)
Mid 50% SAT for enrolled freshman
1730-2070
Mid 50% ACT for enrolled freshman
26-31
Percentage of entering students ranked in the top quarter (25%) of their high schools: 91.7%

I just randomly picked a large state school that had been mentioned by a different poster as more selective for engineering than the general population. Now I’m curious about my daughter’s choice.

Example: Northeastern University - 2015

Engineering:
7,566 students applied
2,916 of those were admitted (38.5% admit rate)
Mid 50% SAT for enrolled freshman
2088-2240
Mid 50% ACT for enrolled freshman
31-34
Percentage of entering students ranked in the top quarter (25%) of their high schools: 97%

Common Data Set for entire university:
50,523 students applied
14,388 of those were admitted (28.5% admit rate)
Mid 50% SAT for enrolled freshman
1980-2240
Mid 50% ACT for enrolled freshman
31-34
Percentage of entering students ranked in the top quarter (25%) of their high schools: 93.9%

Knock me over with a feather. The student profiles are virtually the same but the admit rate is higher for engineering.

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@palm715 I think I looked at the site once before, but thanks for the link. It looks like they lump freshman and transfers together so the admit % may be a little different for freshman than what can be calculated from there. For example, Berkeley the last few years has had 9.7% and 8.9% admit rate for freshmen and the calculated rate from asee.org is 11.3%.

198

I remember when my D was looking at Columbia for engineering, people were asking whether the admit rate was higher for engineering or non-engineering. They said you have to be careful trying to game the system. Often engineering is self-selecting - the applicant pool has higher stats to begin with - especially in math.

When you look at a particular school’s admit rate for engineering, you have to realize they may have a smaller pool of applicants, but the distribution of grades and scores of those applicants may be different than those of the non-engineering applicant pool. Students with lower grades and scores are often warned away from engineering.

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@palm715 - that site is great for class breakdown. Thanks.

It appears those “newly admit” stats are broken out specific to the engineering school. Does anyone know for sure?

200

Probably true for schools that admit by major or division, but careful inspection of the numbers (to compare them with the overall admission numbers) would be needed to see if it is true at a given school.

At some schools that do not admit by major or division (e.g. CWRU), the numbers on the ASEE site look like those of the entire school.