gender balance

[Anonymous]

I'm sure this varies by college, but curious if anyone knows how a college's gender balance may affect admissions? I know SLACs are generally female-heavy and STEM schools are generally male-heavy, so being a male applicant at the former and a female applicant at the latter would probably be a plus factor in admissions. But what about selective universities that are a little bit lopsided? Will a male applicant have a small advantage at school that is say 55% female? Or is that close enough to 50/50 that it won't matter?

[Anonymous]

Short answer: yes it matters. Hard to quantify exactly how much; varies by school and by major.

[Anonymous]

It is a numbers game, so yes it will matter, generally males can get in with lower stats. How much difference will vary from school to school.

[Anonymous]

This is easy to determine. Go to the school’s common data set and look at applications and admits by gender. Compute a percentage to see if there is a bias.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is easy to determine. Go to the school’s common data set and look at applications and admits by gender. Compute a percentage to see if there is a bias.

I have never seen this work in practice after looking through CDS. Even where a gender imbalance where women outnumber men, the admit rate for men is usually lower in my experience. Would be curious of any schools people find where men are minority AND men have a higher acceptance rate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is easy to determine. Go to the school’s common data set and look at applications and admits by gender. Compute a percentage to see if there is a bias.

I have never seen this work in practice after looking through CDS. Even where a gender imbalance where women outnumber men, the admit rate for men is usually lower in my experience. Would be curious of any schools people find where men are minority AND men have a higher acceptance rate.

You have to look at the data on the quality of applicant pool too. But W&M is a place where men are admitted at a higher rate than women.

[Anonymous]

Taking gender into account in state schools is illegal. That’s why William & Mary goes to great lengths to deny that it does it even though it clearly does.

[Anonymous]

Columbia

[Anonymous]

All theater departments favor men in admissions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is easy to determine. Go to the school’s common data set and look at applications and admits by gender. Compute a percentage to see if there is a bias.

I have never seen this work in practice after looking through CDS. Even where a gender imbalance where women outnumber men, the admit rate for men is usually lower in my experience. Would be curious of any schools people find where men are minority AND men have a higher acceptance rate.

You have to look at the data on the quality of applicant pool too. But W&M is a place where men are admitted at a higher rate than women.

Looking at W&M’s latest CDS men have about an 8% higher admit rate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is easy to determine. Go to the school’s common data set and look at applications and admits by gender. Compute a percentage to see if there is a bias.

I have never seen this work in practice after looking through CDS. Even where a gender imbalance where women outnumber men, the admit rate for men is usually lower in my experience. Would be curious of any schools people find where men are minority AND men have a higher acceptance rate.

Look at William & Mary's data, which is a pretty representative of how college's are on average 60% percent women nowadays

https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=William+%26&s=all&id=231624#enrolmt

Look under the Admissions tab - men accepted at 39% percent vs. women at 30%

Then look at the Enrollment Tab and the Undergraduate Student Gender Tab - 58% women vs. 42% Men

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is easy to determine. Go to the school’s common data set and look at applications and admits by gender. Compute a percentage to see if there is a bias.

I have never seen this work in practice after looking through CDS. Even where a gender imbalance where women outnumber men, the admit rate for men is usually lower in my experience. Would be curious of any schools people find where men are minority AND men have a higher acceptance rate.

Look at William & Mary's data, which is a pretty representative of how college's are on average 60% percent women nowadays

https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=William+%26&s=all&id=231624#enrolmt

Look under the Admissions tab - men accepted at 39% percent vs. women at 30%

Then look at the Enrollment Tab and the Undergraduate Student Gender Tab - 58% women vs. 42% Men

Latest entering class was a smidgen more balanced: 44% male, 56% female (no numbers on how many of each applied). And interestingly, 40% of the class was from OOS. Just speculating here, but perhaps they took more OOS to help with gender balance?

https://www.wm.edu/admission/undergraduateadmission/facts-figures/class-profile/index.php

[Anonymous]

Not really. It more matters for intended major. Go into HYPS as a Art history or Russian lit major and a Male might get a slight advantage, go into same schools as a STEM/Eng/CS as a female and they might get a slight advantage. In the end the advantage is so slight it doesn't really matter.

[Anonymous]

Even when the odds are better, plenty of kids of both genders are rejected.

[Anonymous]

As some others have mentioned, this is such a small factor that it’s not really a viable angle. Privates tend to have better gender balance than publics.