General admission bias in favor of male applicants

[Anonymous]

People picking on schools are missing the point. Schools have made enormous changes to try to be accommodating to both genders and to different learning styles, and yet, performance among boys has continued to decline. The article discussed sports, and how boys are measured by their performance in athletics instead of academics. Also, just anecdotally, it’s not considered “cool” for boys to be smart. Boys at private schools probably do better because it’s a safe environment where everyone is encouraged and allowed (by their peer group) to perform well academically.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Women control k-12 education and now college. They design the experience and set the expectations. When girls do relatively worse on standardized tests, they de-emphasize standardized tests. Everything about education these days is hostile to masculine energy which is of course considered toxic. Look at the books your son has to read in English class. The college application process itself favors girls- cultivating relationships with teachers for recommendations where they divulge all their feelings and dreams, getting involved in all these silly organizations. The system is dominated by women and rigged against boys.

Leadership positions at both k-12 and college level are overwhelmingly male.

"Leadership" at K-12 doesn't even matter. If your kid's school has a male principal, your kid will never even see him. The teachers your kids interact with all day every day are overwhelmingly female. In short, as the PP said, women control K-12 education where it matters - at the pit face - they control the experience from end to end. That female teachers have failed boys is certainly a plausible argument based on the outcome.

My son has done great in public school with almost entirely female teachers. No one’s failed him. Expectations for behavior and academic performance begin at home. So many parents letting their boys play video games and watch YouTube for hours and hours every day and then complaining that the school system is rigged against them. Pathetic.

Your education has failed you if you think muh anecdote means anything. Writ large, the education system has clearly failed boys. And that system is run by women.

Oh yeah, who makes the rules and sets the expectations at home? Also women.

You are fooling yourself. Boys have almost always been educated by women. The system is not failing boys. Rather boys are rejecting education.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:The thing is though that high school and middle school favors girls because they go through puberty earlier and that leads to changes in the brain that are advantageous for doing well in school. Boys do catch up eventually, but the current system does make them look like weaker college applicants (esp now that it is so competitive to get into top colleges).

I’m not disagreeing, but when I was in high school boys were just as competitive academically as the girls. There was not this gender imbalance in the classroom. Boys today are particularly disengaged from academics - so I do believe something additional is going on. Chalking it up to simple brain maturity means you’re leaving other explanations on the table.

As school in general has become more drill and kill with lots of worksheets and less fun and creative work and more teaching to the test, it favors girls and boys disengage. As my 7th grade son said in reference to a friend of his who is very smart but constantly forgets to bring the correct materials to class or finish his homework "there are lots of smart boys, but the smart girls are better at school." Their school doesn't allow kids to carry their backpacks around and they only have a couple times a day to go to their lockers, so even that requires a level of organization I didn't have to have in middle school.

My experience has been completely different— teaching methods used to be more “kill & drill” when we were young. Most schools have moved toward project-based assignments, collaboration, and application of knowledge instead of memorization/drills. Teachers are also more accommodating now! Many allow kids to talk quietly, listen to music on headphones, and have a higher tolerance for noise & movement.

So, again, something else is going on. I’m not sure why boys are faltering, but I think it can be fixed.

+1 Schools are bending over backwards to accommodate boys. The bar has gotten lower and lower, but I guess it’s not low enough.

My dad who was educated by nuns, likes to say he's glad he had daughters because boys need to be beaten into submission. Perhaps the removal of corporal punishment is the liberalism PP is bemoaning? None of this is my experience, I have a son and daughter who've both made it to college. DD has graduated with honors, and it's too soon to know if DS will match that, but he is plenty studious. If he's had a beef with some of the classroom management along the way, that's for him to sort. Actually, both had some of the same teachers, and mostly agreed in their gripes. This included male teachers with weird foibles, too.

I'm a man, and when I was a boy I was frequently beaten by teachers and by my parents. I completely disagree that boys need to be beaten. I have never needed to hit my sons. However, it ought to be obvious that boys need a different teaching style than girls, and you motivate boys differently from girls. I guess it's not obvious, though, at least to women, because women teachers invariably use the same teaching style on boys as they use on girls. This doesn't work but women teachers don't care, or just think the problem is the boys and not their teaching.

Teachers don’t have time or resources to differentiate their teaching style for every type of learner. (Because it goes way past girls vs. boys.) If whatever’s happening isn’t working for your boy, you can seek out single-sex education or homeschool.

The problem is that the overall teaching is not designed to work well for most boys. While some people can switch their kids to private school or home school, that is not an option for most people. it is bad for all of us if boys in public school are not learning.

Poor boys.

Exactly. You hate boys. Like many of their teachers, to some degree or another.

I love boys. I have one of my own and he’s killing it in school. Sorry yours is having problems.

No they are thriving, despite the bs

[Anonymous]

Blah blah.

I have 2 athletic make teens who have been straight A students. School has always come incredibly easy—in all subjects.

I never have even looked to see canvas or anything else. They are honors/AP at a hard private because middle school (public k-8) was a joke.

Oldest scored 35 first try ACT end of sophomore year (36 reading and verbal). Has an unweighted 4.0/4.4 (APs not allowed freshmen only 1 allowed sophomore year). He is looking at politics/international relations/history.

Sophomore also has straight As. Great creative writer, music - but loves science too. Avid reader.

They both excel at 2 sports. Oldest will play in college. He had a summer job and took a college course last summer.

His friends are very much like him—superb students. Very social, active.

Boys in UMC are not flailing. At the more elite universities gender tends to be more balanced.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Women control k-12 education and now college. They design the experience and set the expectations. When girls do relatively worse on standardized tests, they de-emphasize standardized tests. Everything about education these days is hostile to masculine energy which is of course considered toxic. Look at the books your son has to read in English class. The college application process itself favors girls- cultivating relationships with teachers for recommendations where they divulge all their feelings and dreams, getting involved in all these silly organizations. The system is dominated by women and rigged against boys.

Leadership positions at both k-12 and college level are overwhelmingly male.

"Leadership" at K-12 doesn't even matter. If your kid's school has a male principal, your kid will never even see him. The teachers your kids interact with all day every day are overwhelmingly female. In short, as the PP said, women control K-12 education where it matters - at the pit face - they control the experience from end to end. That female teachers have failed boys is certainly a plausible argument based on the outcome.

My son has done great in public school with almost entirely female teachers. No one’s failed him. Expectations for behavior and academic performance begin at home. So many parents letting their boys play video games and watch YouTube for hours and hours every day and then complaining that the school system is rigged against them. Pathetic.

Your education has failed you if you think muh anecdote means anything. Writ large, the education system has clearly failed boys. And that system is run by women.

Oh yeah, who makes the rules and sets the expectations at home? Also women.

You are fooling yourself. Boys have almost always been educated by women. The system is not failing boys. Rather boys are rejecting education.

We went all male Jesuit high school for that reason. It’s about 75% male to 25% female teachers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Blah blah.

I have 2 athletic make teens who have been straight A students. School has always come incredibly easy—in all subjects.

I never have even looked to see canvas or anything else. They are honors/AP at a hard private because middle school (public k-8) was a joke.

Oldest scored 35 first try ACT end of sophomore year (36 reading and verbal). Has an unweighted 4.0/4.4 (APs not allowed freshmen only 1 allowed sophomore year). He is looking at politics/international relations/history.

Sophomore also has straight As. Great creative writer, music - but loves science too. Avid reader.

They both excel at 2 sports. Oldest will play in college. He had a summer job and took a college course last summer.

His friends are very much like him—superb students. Very social, active.

Boys in UMC are not flailing. At the more elite universities gender tends to be more balanced.

Yep elite boys seem to be doing fine. But what is going on in the bottom 2/3 of the bell curve?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The thing is though that high school and middle school favors girls because they go through puberty earlier and that leads to changes in the brain that are advantageous for doing well in school. Boys do catch up eventually, but the current system does make them look like weaker college applicants (esp now that it is so competitive to get into top colleges).

I’m not disagreeing, but when I was in high school boys were just as competitive academically as the girls. There was not this gender imbalance in the classroom. Boys today are particularly disengaged from academics - so I do believe something additional is going on. Chalking it up to simple brain maturity means you’re leaving other explanations on the table.

As school in general has become more drill and kill with lots of worksheets and less fun and creative work and more teaching to the test, it favors girls and boys disengage. As my 7th grade son said in reference to a friend of his who is very smart but constantly forgets to bring the correct materials to class or finish his homework "there are lots of smart boys, but the smart girls are better at school." Their school doesn't allow kids to carry their backpacks around and they only have a couple times a day to go to their lockers, so even that requires a level of organization I didn't have to have in middle school.

My experience has been completely different— teaching methods used to be more “kill & drill” when we were young. Most schools have moved toward project-based assignments, collaboration, and application of knowledge instead of memorization/drills. Teachers are also more accommodating now! Many allow kids to talk quietly, listen to music on headphones, and have a higher tolerance for noise & movement.

So, again, something else is going on. I’m not sure why boys are faltering, but I think it can be fixed.

+1 Schools are bending over backwards to accommodate boys. The bar has gotten lower and lower, but I guess it’s not low enough.

My dad who was educated by nuns, likes to say he's glad he had daughters because boys need to be beaten into submission. Perhaps the removal of corporal punishment is the liberalism PP is bemoaning? None of this is my experience, I have a son and daughter who've both made it to college. DD has graduated with honors, and it's too soon to know if DS will match that, but he is plenty studious. If he's had a beef with some of the classroom management along the way, that's for him to sort. Actually, both had some of the same teachers, and mostly agreed in their gripes. This included male teachers with weird foibles, too.

I'm a man, and when I was a boy I was frequently beaten by teachers and by my parents. I completely disagree that boys need to be beaten. I have never needed to hit my sons. However, it ought to be obvious that boys need a different teaching style than girls, and you motivate boys differently from girls. I guess it's not obvious, though, at least to women, because women teachers invariably use the same teaching style on boys as they use on girls. This doesn't work but women teachers don't care, or just think the problem is the boys and not their teaching.

Teachers don’t have time or resources to differentiate their teaching style for every type of learner. (Because it goes way past girls vs. boys.) If whatever’s happening isn’t working for your boy, you can seek out single-sex education or homeschool.

The problem is that the overall teaching is not designed to work well for most boys. While some people can switch their kids to private school or home school, that is not an option for most people. it is bad for all of us if boys in public school are not learning.

Poor boys.

Exactly. You hate boys. Like many of their teachers, to some degree or another.

I love boys. I have one of my own and he’s killing it in school. Sorry yours is having problems.

No they are thriving, despite the bs

Gotcha. So you don’t actually have any experience to support the idea that “the bs” is the problem.

[Anonymous]

male athletes with strong test scores do well. news at 11.

do people not grasp how many 4.0/35ACT get turned down?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Finally!

What do you mean finally? Do you even know the history of college and women?

For shame!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The Great Gatsy, Passing, Maus, Hamlet, Giovanni's Room, Frankenstein,
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Going After Cacciato, Persepolis.

This is my son's book HS list for the year. Seems kinda gender neutral to me.

I wish my kid was assigned that many in one year. My 10th grader last year had to read Lord of the Flies, The Great Gatsby and Romeo and Juliet. There’s barely any assigned reading because boys apparently don’t like to read.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Equity" at work. Trying to achieve "balance" instead of just going with the best candidates.

I understand we are in a patriarchy.

Um, what now? How do we have a patriarchy if women are doing so much better than men that colleges have to actively compensate for it?

It's hard to accept that we need men in college,

Oh vey. How would you feel if a man said women aren’t needed in college?

even if they don't do as well in school as women. Why would we give them a break if they don't have the best academic profiles as a group,

Now do blacks.

and if the people at the top are mostly all men anyway? But then what do you when hardly any men go on to graduate college, and take menial positions in society?

Nobody for your daughters to marry, oh well.

It would be a very interesting experiment, but perhaps not with the result you have in mind.

Np. Why would I encourage my dd to marry a man?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The thing is though that high school and middle school favors girls because they go through puberty earlier and that leads to changes in the brain that are advantageous for doing well in school. Boys do catch up eventually, but the current system does make them look like weaker college applicants (esp now that it is so competitive to get into top colleges).

I’m not disagreeing, but when I was in high school boys were just as competitive academically as the girls. There was not this gender imbalance in the classroom. Boys today are particularly disengaged from academics - so I do believe something additional is going on. Chalking it up to simple brain maturity means you’re leaving other explanations on the table.

As school in general has become more drill and kill with lots of worksheets and less fun and creative work and more teaching to the test, it favors girls and boys disengage. As my 7th grade son said in reference to a friend of his who is very smart but constantly forgets to bring the correct materials to class or finish his homework "there are lots of smart boys, but the smart girls are better at school." Their school doesn't allow kids to carry their backpacks around and they only have a couple times a day to go to their lockers, so even that requires a level of organization I didn't have to have in middle school.

My experience has been completely different— teaching methods used to be more “kill & drill” when we were young. Most schools have moved toward project-based assignments, collaboration, and application of knowledge instead of memorization/drills. Teachers are also more accommodating now! Many allow kids to talk quietly, listen to music on headphones, and have a higher tolerance for noise & movement.

So, again, something else is going on. I’m not sure why boys are faltering, but I think it can be fixed.

+1 Schools are bending over backwards to accommodate boys. The bar has gotten lower and lower, but I guess it’s not low enough.

My dad who was educated by nuns, likes to say he's glad he had daughters because boys need to be beaten into submission. Perhaps the removal of corporal punishment is the liberalism PP is bemoaning? None of this is my experience, I have a son and daughter who've both made it to college. DD has graduated with honors, and it's too soon to know if DS will match that, but he is plenty studious. If he's had a beef with some of the classroom management along the way, that's for him to sort. Actually, both had some of the same teachers, and mostly agreed in their gripes. This included male teachers with weird foibles, too.

I'm a man, and when I was a boy I was frequently beaten by teachers and by my parents. I completely disagree that boys need to be beaten. I have never needed to hit my sons. However, it ought to be obvious that boys need a different teaching style than girls, and you motivate boys differently from girls. I guess it's not obvious, though, at least to women, because women teachers invariably use the same teaching style on boys as they use on girls. This doesn't work but women teachers don't care, or just think the problem is the boys and not their teaching.

Teachers don’t have time or resources to differentiate their teaching style for every type of learner. (Because it goes way past girls vs. boys.) If whatever’s happening isn’t working for your boy, you can seek out single-sex education or homeschool.

The problem is that the overall teaching is not designed to work well for most boys. While some people can switch their kids to private school or home school, that is not an option for most people. it is bad for all of us if boys in public school are not learning.

Poor boys.

Exactly. You hate boys. Like many of their teachers, to some degree or another.

I love boys. I have one of my own and he’s killing it in school. Sorry yours is having problems.

No they are thriving, despite the bs

If your kids are thriving in school and their teachers are still treating them poorly, it might be because their parents are jerks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Blah blah.

I have 2 athletic make teens who have been straight A students. School has always come incredibly easy—in all subjects.

I never have even looked to see canvas or anything else. They are honors/AP at a hard private because middle school (public k-8) was a joke.

Oldest scored 35 first try ACT end of sophomore year (36 reading and verbal). Has an unweighted 4.0/4.4 (APs not allowed freshmen only 1 allowed sophomore year). He is looking at politics/international relations/history.

Sophomore also has straight As. Great creative writer, music - but loves science too. Avid reader.

They both excel at 2 sports. Oldest will play in college. He had a summer job and took a college course last summer.

His friends are very much like him—superb students. Very social, active.

Boys in UMC are not flailing. At the more elite universities gender tends to be more balanced.

Private schools boys are doing terrific!! The schools create a space that encourages them to do well, and they respond to it. Public schools, contrary to what a prior poster said, have had a low bar for boys. And boys have floundered.

[Anonymous]

Let’s look at the underlying data and see what is happening. At the college age level men and women are about a 50/50 split in population.

With more women are applying to colleges across the board men do have an overall admission advantage in the mid to upper single digits on a percentage basis. Just look at a few college common data sets and do the math. Sure still a challenge to get into CS, engineering and business, because that’s what men tend to want to study.

So with more women applying and schools wanting keep a reasonable gender balance, admission rates for women will be lower than that for men. Yes woman will have an advantage in STEM because it is not a “traditional” female path.

Why do colleges care about gender balance, because they want happy customers and that occurs with a balance between men and women. Woman although seeking professional degree to a greater extent, but still pursue traditional field such at teaching, nursing and the ultimate tradition degree “Mrs.” So schools need to have at least a 40% male base to be able to fulfill all major tracks for their female students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Equity" at work. Trying to achieve "balance" instead of just going with the best candidates.

What do you do then if your student body is 80% mostly middle class, white or asian, female applicants?
I am all for an academic meritocracy, but if all colleges do this, what are the consequences on society for the next generations?
The article tries to get at this.

I understand we are in a patriarchy. It's hard to accept that we need men in college, even if they don't do as well in school as women. Why would we give them a break if they don't have the best academic profiles as a group, and if the people at the top are mostly all men anyway? But then what do you when hardly any men go on to graduate college, and take menial positions in society?

It would be a very interesting experiment, but perhaps not with the result you have in mind.

+1. It doesn’t even have to be an experiment. It’s already happening. Just look at the black community and how the lack of eligible men is having ontheir families.

Well, that’s the result of.. not so much an experiment but a deliberate policy of imprisoning Black me to keep them from voting.