Women's Colleges Experiencing Record Yields - 30-35% increase this year.

Parents Forum
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The problem started with the title suggesting a “Trump Bump” and with the word misogyny. Some seemed to have picked up on wantng to educate without men and it’s really more than that.

The author: “For those colleges that are explicitly talking about #MeToo and political leaders who are misogynistic, the current moment is prompting some to rethink how they position their institutions.” It’s not followed by some back up that points as directly to misogyny or political awareness:

"Cassidy, of Bryn Mawr, said that she sees her college and others being more explicit about the value of women’s colleges, while also trying to fight off misconceptions about them.

“I think we need to be really clear that the message is not about separating from society,” but about “owning who we are,” she said."

The discussion here then got confused about why a woman might choose a women’s college. It’s not as simple as Catholics wanting to educate among other Catholics, that perspective, your peer group sharing religious views, maybe your dating among others of the same personal values.

It’s not just about segregating, per se. Try to get past that. And try to realize there are women of many flavors, backgrounds and interests among the students at women’s colleges.

There’s irony in some here advocating for women’s colleges and then stereotyping the women. Women’s colleges are not full of social justice warriors and gals who want to avoid fraternity hijinks. It’s much more layered than that. And, in ways, simpler.

We should try to avoid the defensive and understand more of what that “value” is.

We should also try to understand where financial aid is part of the pull.

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There is nothing wrong with self segregation in and of itself. We segregate ourselves in our everyday lives around interests and beliefs. It shouldn’t be seen as a weakness…

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@CValle, I am taking objection to your implying about the negative college environment at UPitt and other colleges in general in post #17
" She has no interest in dealing with right-wing culture and has no desire to have that impact her education or her social life. She turned down a full ride to UPitt, turned down scholarships at co-ed schools, to attend a women’s college BECAUSE of the atmosphere at a women’s college vs. the atmosphere in other colleges/the country at large."

Your such views about UPitt are highly misplaced to put it mildly!

Good luck to your D! Hope she fulfills her dreams at MHC.

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I understand why some people like the women’s colleges, but they aren’t polar opposites of co-ed colleges. My daughter felt very unwelcomed at Smith. She did not think her views would be respected or even considered. She definitely got the feeling that ‘we are right, so if you don’t agree with us, you are wrong’ no matter what her actual position was on an issue. Every question she was asked was an interrogation. She’s not very political and not a SJW at all, but she didn’t like how angry everyone seemed when she said she had no opinions on pronouns or really wasn’t interested in Wash DC or politics in Spain.

Kind of ironically, she chose a school that is 70% male. She didn’t want her race, sex, orientation, political views to matter as much as they seemed to at Smith. Of course they always matter, but she didn’t want to fight about it all the time. Now that she’s 5 years older, she’d like to do an Americorps year or learn more about political issues, but she wants to do it on her terms and not be told she’s wrong for considered a right leaning view. I have to say I think she was right about Smith FOR HER; she would have hated it.

My other much more liberal daughter goes to school in a ‘red’ state and I think she’s learned to appreciate both sides of an issue more than if she’d gone to a very liberal campus where everyone agrees about everything. She would have liked a women’s college, but I’m not sure she would have developed her own opinions as much as she has by being in a challenging (for her) social and political atmosphere.

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But many students attending women’s colleges are not self-segregating any more than they would be by joining a sorority at a co-ed college. Many women choose a consortium-affiliated school precisely because they don’t want all their classes to be single gender and they want readily available social activities and interaction with men. And there are a lot to choose from – Barnard, Scripps, Bryn Mawr, Smith & Mount Holyoke (listed in order of physical proximity to their partner colleges). Wellesley offers cross-registration with Brandeis, Babson, MIT, & Olin; Mills with UC Berkeley and a long list of local & regional CSU’s and community colleges. Basically if a women’s college is within a reasonable commuting distance of another college or university, they are likely to have a cross-registration option.

So very often the student is selecting the college based on other features & benefits. They find that one or more of the women’s colleges is a good fit for what they are looking for, with the added benefit of being somewhat less competitive for admissions than equivalent peer co-ed colleges, resulting from exclusion of half of the human population from the admissions pools. They come onto cc asking questions about cross-registration and social/dating opportunities.

And yes, some women are opting for a feminist empowering education in the age of Trump… but that is some, not all. It’s faulty logic to draw conclusions based on application content or essays, because students write what they think the colleges want to hear. There may be a lot of truth in what they write, but there are also other truths that they don’t write about because it is exactly the wrong thing to say in a college application. For example, “I’d rather attend [Amherst|Columbia|Swarthmore|Pomona] but I don’t think I can get in” probably doesn’t win over many ad coms.

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That’s undoubtedly true for some women who end up at women’s colleges. But it wouldn’t explain a sudden big jump in applications and yield at women’s colleges (if indeed there is such a big jump). Amherst, Pomona and Columbia were already very difficult to get into before this recent jump (if it exists).

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But there seem to be steadily increasing numbers of applications and yield across the board at all colleges - the reason admission rates are diminishing is that application pools are getting bigger. That’s all anyone could talk about this year - how high stat kids are getting turned down by match/safety schools & how important yield protection has become in the selection process. And as I noted upthread, at least for Barnard, there is a very steady downward trend in admission rate coupled with an upward trend in yield going back to at least 2012. So, more kids than ever are applying to colleges; kids feel under increasing pressure to apply ED (which definitely boosts yield figures); and colleges are getting more and more conscious of yield factors in making admission decisions.

And something else to factor in-- as Barnard’s admissions rate has dropped from ~25% to around ~14% over the past few years – a trend clearly going back to at least 2015 – (ref: https://barnard.edu/sites/default/files/adm2_fy_admissionstable_10.17.17.pdf ) that also creates a larger pool of Barnard waitlist & rejections. These are students who would have applied to a woman’s college with or without a political concern, but now they can’t get into their top choice. Where do they go? Well, maybe some of them are feeding Bryn Mawr’s claimed 8% uptick in admissions and 4% increase in yield. So that’s another strand of students feeding into the schools that once might have been overlooked.

I think it’s naive to think that it is a single cause – it’s a confluence of factors. That’s why I say it makes sense to wait until final data is available via the CDS… and not to look at women’s colleges in isolation.

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You might be right @calmom but as has been pointed out elsewhere on this thread, that assumes that the applicants at Barnard see the other women’s colleges as the same or nearly the same. Once you look closely at Barnard and look past the single-sex factor, it’s a very different school from using your example, Bryn Mawr (BMC). I don’t think that many Barnard-as-top-choice students would then go to BMC – vastly different cultures (one more overtly competitive, one more homey), vastly different campuses (one decidedly urban and modern, one almost bucolic and Gothic), vastly different FA policies (both are full-need-met but one is need-based only while the other is merit and need; one offers poor FA to transfer students, one much better aid to transfers).

Smith – upstream in this discussion – also completely different school from its physical characteristics (white New England clapboard feel amid polished country club) to it’s overtly politics-first stance (as described above) and set in a small New England Town. it doesn’t follow that someone who applies first-choice to Barnard would then decide to look at Smith.

These schools are not simple replacements for each other.

Mt. Holyoke – feels deeply it’s historic roots to empower women and yet eschews that political edge of Smith; architecture – sprawling Victorian buildings and ponds and horses.

In other words I’m not seeing that there’s a sort of tickle-down affect from Barnard into these other schools in terms of admissions numbers. I might be wrong, but it’s hard for me to fathom.

Also – where as some women may view women’s colleges as back doors into traditionally male colleges @calmom , for our family at least, that wasn’t the case and that hasn’t seemed to be the case among the other young women we met who are choosing to attend women’s colleges. The ones we’ve met thus far are seeking women’s colleges for what they offer in and of themselves: leadership training; academic depth; supportive network of peers ( for our family). Not to mention gorgeous campus.

Maybe Barnard and Scripps are viewed as second-class-citizens and sort of back doors to “better” institutions by some because of their proximities to big traditionally male peer schools, but that’s not the case, I believe,at most of the women’s schools that hold their own. Barnard has often been overshadowed by CU college that way, I think, sadly and doesn’t deserve to be.

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@Dustyfeathers I have already remarked on the differences between Barnard and other women’s colleges on this thread, but the fact remains that there is a large contingent of students that apply to multiple women’s colleges, including Barnard – and we see that all the time at CC in the college selection and results threads. I have personally corresponded with several parents of students whose top choice was Barnard but ended up, quite happy, at Bryn Mawr-- after being waitlisted or rejected from Barnard.

You can see Parchment data on the two schools here:
https://www.parchment.com/c/college/tools/college-cross-admit-comparison.php?compare=Barnard+College&with=Bryn+Mawr+College

You are right that the colleges are different, but Cornell is not the same environment as Harvard, and yet many, many students apply to both. If they get into Harvard, that’s where they will usually go - but the ones who are turned down by Harvard and other Ivies but get accepted to Cornell usually end up choosing Cornell.

Because all colleges are not the same, but students will apply to a range of different colleges based on their individual preferences.

There are some students like my daughter who choose to apply to Barnard primarily because they want to come to New York- those are the students who, like my daughter, also apply to NYU and to Fordham. And Columbia if they think they can get in.

There are some students who choose to apply to Barnard primarily because of its affiliation with Columbia, and those students are typically cross-applying to Columbia and other Ivies.

And there are some students who do want a women’s college, and those are typically cross-applying to Wellesley, MHC, BMC, and/or Smith. And if they don’t get into Barnard or Wellesley, they very often choose another sister college. Wellesley has also a declining admission rate, from 28.6% in 2016 to 22% in 2017. See https://www.wellesley.edu/oir/factbook17/admission-statistics

And as I said there are multiple different strands of students that feed the applicant pool of each college. But I definitely think that the Barnard’s sharply declining admission rate, as well as the increasing difficulty of getting accepted to Wellesley, would be one of the several factors impacting yield at BMC and the other sister colleges. They can only choose among the colleges which actually admit them. So as admissions get more competitive at the top, it is definitely going to drive up yield for the next tier of schools in terms of selectivity.

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^ yup. Friend’s D wanted Wellesley but was waitlisted. Accepted Smith offer. Came off waitlist, switched back to Wellesley.

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Some assorted ramblings:

-FWIW, back when I was paying attention, there was a contingent of Barnard applicants who were primarily interested in women’s colleges.
But there was another contingent who just wanted to go to a good school in (or near) a big city, female or not. So, a lot of posts about Barnard vs. Tufts, Barnard vs. Georgetown…
Then another contingent who just really wanted to go to school in NYC specifically. So: lots of Barnard vs. NYU. And Barnard vs.Columbia College.

Then there were the group of applicants interested in the former women’s colleges not that far from NYC. Vassar particularly, but also Connecticut College and Skidmore on the back end. Due mostly to some relative excellences and programs in common, eg dance.

Not all the women’s colleges equally share all of these different contingents. And they may no doubt have other contingents of their own.

-Remember women’s colleges have half the possible applicant pool from the outset; no men are applying. Their selectivity must be viewed with this in mind.

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@Dustyfeathers Having had members of my family recent attend Barnard (and Columbia), I don’t think today’s Barnard student feels second-class. A few might but the situation has change dramatically in recent years. I agree with you that Barnard is also very different from other women’s colleges in that it offers a women’s college experience in a major research university setting. That’s pretty unique and not found at any other women’s college.

Along these lines, my D had a friend transfer from Barnard to Smith because she felt that Barnard wasn’t “really” a women’s college. It’s a touchy subject but there is some merit in arguing that Barnard is really little more than a division of Columbia University, albeit a self-governing one. But that’s a topic for another day.