Boy applicant pool has lower acceptance rate at LACs
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Anonymous
| The male and female pool at SLACs is definitely not equal. But rather going in circles on that, think about “boy” majors like computer science and econ. These majors are already oversubscribed so, no, SLACs don’t want more male computer science and econ majors; don’t expect a gender boost there. |
Anonymous
Amazing how many people don’t know this (DS is SLAC stem major). |
Anonymous
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Washington Post (or maybe NYT, but pretty sure WashPo) did a story about this a year or so ago? Basically showed that women increasingly apply to LACs in much higher numbers and are closing/have closed the testing gap to test higher on admissions tests. Some schools with higher priority on equity balance, try to keep roughly(ish) proportions of males and females, meaning males get an admissions boost. Other schools, either to be gender-blind and/or often chasing rankings which depends on scores, etc., admit materially disproportionate numbers of males v. females. The story named some schools in each camp, I remember William & Mary, e.g.
Fwiw I have worked in a graduate program at two different universities that did the latter, and we had female enrollment at 60%+ the last several years. Glad to see women excel in a traditionally non-STEM, male-dominated field  but it does mean a small cluster of males usually sit together in class. I know that women were in that position for decades (and still in the classroom, depending on the class/major/program), but my university experience since college was always closer to 50/50, so it's noticeable.
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Anonymous
| I think I found the WashPo story--it's dated (2016), sorry, so either I was reading an old story as I started thinking about college admissions for our kids or there's a newer story I don't see. Anyway, here it is: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/03/14/want-a-college-admissions-edge-these-schools-might-give-you-a-gender-advantage/ |
Anonymous
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Acceptance rates have many factors. As a group, females have higher grades than males. While grades have always had very important weight in admissions, recent TO admissions cycles focus more heavily on grades than ever, with even lesser weight on scores, where males, as a group, historically have had higher stats.
If females yield at higher rates than males at LACs, then that would be another significant factor increasing female acceptance rates as a group. |
Anonymous
| Just a note that females sometimes think they get a “boost” in all STEM fields. But not all STEM fields are alike: biology, neuroscience, environmental science, and cognitive science are predominantly female majors. |
Anonymous
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Boys applying as a humanities major still gets a bump
These numbers are school-wide, including stem majors which still (barely now) favor girls. |
Anonymous
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It’s really hard to tell what’s going on with admitted students. Here’s UMich CDS from last year. Equal number of men and women applicants, 42k each. Many more men admitted. But the yield for men was terrible, so that in the end many more women attended!
Maybe the men only wanted Engineering or the Business School and wouldn’t attend the second choice Arts and Sciences. But it’s very uneven for UMich. https://obp.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/pubdata/cds/cds_2022-2023_umaa.pdf |
Anonymous
You lump all STEM majors together, in terms of gender, at your peril. Biology majors are overwhelmingly female. Boys get a bump in most majors — not just humanities — but not in stereotypically male majors such as computer science, math, physical sciences, economics and, if the school has it, business and engineering. The problem is that, increasingly, high-achieving males are gravitating to only those majors. |
Anonymous
| What are some mid-tier LACs (say the equivalent of Virginia Tech, Rutgers, OSU or Pitt on the National Schools side) that have great STEM programs (hard core ones - CS, Engineering, data science, etc.)? |
Anonymous
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PP who referenced the "thumb on the scale" article. Here it is:
"There Was Definitely a Thumb on the Scale to get Boys": https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/magazine/men-college-enrollment.html |
Anonymous
This. Boys probably think they can play the gender card. The schools still have standards. |
Anonymous
Interesting that they seek to balance out ratios when there are more females but never worried about that when men outweighed women. Had to laugh at this line. “men are less likely to marry and benefit from the grounding influence of raising children. “ Sometimes I question this benefit😂 |
Anonymous
It is not true that girls have a much higher acceptance rate than boys at LACs. I just went through the CDs for a number of LACs that DS is interested in. At most of the schools, it's about even, i.e. the percent of boys admitted is about equal to the percent who applied, +/- one or two percent. This includes Williams, Amherst, Bates, Holy Cross, Richmond, and Denison. Boys have a slight advantage (two to five percent) at Middlebury, Bowdoin, Villanova. Boys have a slight disadvantage (two to five percent) at Trinity, Hamilton, Colby, Bentley, Haverford, Colgate. Boys have a huge advantage (10.6 percent!) at Wesleyan. Boys have a significant disadvantage (6.7 percent) at Kenyon. |
Anonymous
| The podcast, Your College Bound Kid, just did a deep dive on this: https://yourcollegeboundkid.com/2023/10/27/ycbk-373-there-was-definitely-a-thumb-on-the-scale-to-get-boys-this-year/ |