So, where are your kids starting college next fall?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

It's hard to know, really. But I'd bet that W&M is more self-selecting than UVA. Certainly far fewer boys apply there than girls. But many in state students who apply either to UVA or W&M (or both) often apply to JMU as a safety. If you're good enough for UVA to be on your radar, you're pretty much guaranteed admission to JMU.

There is this urban myth going around that W&M has become a school that only interests girls. Someone posted on another thread that it's on it's way to becoming a private all female college. Nothing could be farther from the truth. UVA's current undergraduate enrollment is 55% female vs. 58% at W&M. Is this a meaningful difference? And BTW, JMU is a very good school. Is there any question that Virginia overall has the finest state university system in the country? Imagine if you were stuck with SUNY Binghampton/Geneseo. Not ideal!

It's not an urban myth. Last year 9011 women applied but only 5371 men. That's almost twice as many women. The only reason the school is 58 percent women and not more is because the school admitted 44 percent of male applicants but only 32 percent for women. Because it's a tougher admit for women without question, women admitted there are more likely to be admitted to other top colleges than men and go elsewhere.

Compare this to UVA, which had 17.048 women apply and 15,329 men -- and admitted 29 and 31 percent. Not nearly as big a discrepancy.

There is simply no question that William and Mary is much more attractive to women than men. It always has been, and its Dean of Admissions has been first to admit it. He has suggested that it's partly because it doesn't have an engineering school and doesn't have Division 1-A football.

Fact, not myth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
It's hard to know, really. But I'd bet that W&M is more self-selecting than UVA. Certainly far fewer boys apply there than girls. But many in state students who apply either to UVA or W&M (or both) often apply to JMU as a safety. If you're good enough for UVA to be on your radar, you're pretty much guaranteed admission to JMU.


There is this urban myth going around that W&M has become a school that only interests girls. Someone posted on another thread that it's on it's way to becoming a private all female college. Nothing could be farther from the truth. UVA's current undergraduate enrollment is 55% female vs. 58% at W&M. Is this a meaningful difference? And BTW, JMU is a very good school. Is there any question that Virginia overall has the finest state university system in the country? Imagine if you were stuck with SUNY Binghampton/Geneseo. Not ideal!


It's not an urban myth. Last year 9011 women applied but only 5371 men. That's almost twice as many women. The only reason the school is 58 percent women and not more is because the school admitted 44 percent of male applicants but only 32 percent for women. Because it's a tougher admit for women without question, women admitted there are more likely to be admitted to other top colleges than men and go elsewhere.

Compare this to UVA, which had 17.048 women apply and 15,329 men -- and admitted 29 and 31 percent. Not nearly as big a discrepancy.

There is simply no question that William and Mary is much more attractive to women than men. It always has been, and its Dean of Admissions has been first to admit it. He has suggested that it's partly because it doesn't have an engineering school and doesn't have Division 1-A football.

Fact, not myth.

Are you the one who thinks W&M is on its way to becoming a women's only private college?

I thought the "fact" of the enrollment figures is what mattered. Yes we all know about the application statistics that you cite. I guess more women are choosing UVA too if the applicant variance is two percent but the enrollment variance five. Men. Only attracted by football and STEMY stuff.

To think that poetry was once a profoundly male vocation....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The poster's kids may well have chosen JMU over UVA and William & Mary, but it's also an unusual and probably unwise choice. It's not one that I would have encouraged my kids to make. At a minimum, I'd suggest s/he try UVA first, then transfer. There's nothing wrong with JMU and it has some very good programs, but it's nowhere near as good as UVA and, in fact, the quality of its student body has been stagnant for years.

Source? Or is this just your own opinion? JMU's student body is much like that of UVA, Tech, etc. No real difference. And JMU has far more degree choices than UVA or W&M. And finally - and perhaps most important - the students at JMU don't have chips on their shoulders.

I love JMI - multiple family members have graduated from there. However, the student body may seem the same, but the common data set (or SCHEV numbers) tells a different story in terms of test scores and grades of the average student.

Agreed. Anyone who has put kids through the Virginia school system knows that there is a huge difference in high school performance between the typical JMU and UVA student. Tech is also a tougher admit than JMU. JMU is a nice school, but it's not UVA.

To some that is a good thing.

+100
Exactly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Air conditioners not provided by the university". Wash & Lee. They have an allergy exception for window A/Cs. https://www.wlu.edu/student-life/residential-life/upper-division-housing/faqs/upper-division-housing-faqs

Yes, by all means if you can’t afford a $200 air conditioner for the tiny minority of housing options that aren’t AC’ed look elsewhere. Sad that someone posted about their kid getting into this fine school and people can’t resist being mean. But hey, welcome to DCUM.

You're not allowed AC in the dorms unless you get allergy clearance. Would you like to talk instead about General Lee's horse?

The dorms are air conditioned. All of them.

No they are not. "A/C not provided by the university". https://www.wlu.edu/student-life/residential-life/upper-division-housing/faqs/upper-division-housing-faqs#AC%20Install

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The poster's kids may well have chosen JMU over UVA and William & Mary, but it's also an unusual and probably unwise choice. It's not one that I would have encouraged my kids to make. At a minimum, I'd suggest s/he try UVA first, then transfer. There's nothing wrong with JMU and it has some very good programs, but it's nowhere near as good as UVA and, in fact, the quality of its student body has been stagnant for years.

Source? Or is this just your own opinion? JMU's student body is much like that of UVA, Tech, etc. No real difference. And JMU has far more degree choices than UVA or W&M. And finally - and perhaps most important - the students at JMU don't have chips on their shoulders.

I love JMI - multiple family members have graduated from there. However, the student body may seem the same, but the common data set (or SCHEV numbers) tells a different story in terms of test scores and grades of the average student.

Agreed. Anyone who has put kids through the Virginia school system knows that there is a huge difference in high school performance between the typical JMU and UVA student. Tech is also a tougher admit than JMU. JMU is a nice school, but it's not UVA.

SCHEV:
Stats/profile of actual students entering last year, fall 2017 . . . UVA has slightly higher stats for enrolled students than W&M:


UVA 4.44 (77th percentile) 4.29 Median 4.13 (25th percentile). ACT 33/32/29 SAT: 1500/1400/1300

W&M 4.44 4.24 4.04 ACT:33/31/29 SAT: 1480/1390/1300

JMU 3.99 3.73 3.52 ACT:28/25/23 SAT: 1350/1180/1110


http://research.schev.edu//enrollment/B10_FreshmenProfile.asp

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
It's hard to know, really. But I'd bet that W&M is more self-selecting than UVA. Certainly far fewer boys apply there than girls. But many in state students who apply either to UVA or W&M (or both) often apply to JMU as a safety. If you're good enough for UVA to be on your radar, you're pretty much guaranteed admission to JMU.


There is this urban myth going around that W&M has become a school that only interests girls. Someone posted on another thread that it's on it's way to becoming a private all female college. Nothing could be farther from the truth. UVA's current undergraduate enrollment is 55% female vs. 58% at W&M. Is this a meaningful difference? And BTW, JMU is a very good school. Is there any question that Virginia overall has the finest state university system in the country? Imagine if you were stuck with SUNY Binghampton/Geneseo. Not ideal!


It's not an urban myth. Last year 9011 women applied but only 5371 men. That's almost twice as many women. The only reason the school is 58 percent women and not more is because the school admitted 44 percent of male applicants but only 32 percent for women. Because it's a tougher admit for women without question, women admitted there are more likely to be admitted to other top colleges than men and go elsewhere.

Compare this to UVA, which had 17.048 women apply and 15,329 men -- and admitted 29 and 31 percent. Not nearly as big a discrepancy.

There is simply no question that William and Mary is much more attractive to women than men. It always has been, and its Dean of Admissions has been first to admit it. He has suggested that it's partly because it doesn't have an engineering school and doesn't have Division 1-A football.

Fact, not myth.

Are you the one who thinks W&M is on its way to becoming a women's only private college?

I thought the "fact" of the enrollment figures is what mattered. Yes we all know about the application statistics that you cite. I guess more women are choosing UVA too if the applicant variance is two percent but the enrollment variance five. Men. Only attracted by football and STEMY stuff.

To think that poetry was once a profoundly male vocation....

You're an idiot. I said "certainly far fewer boys apply than girls," and you responded by talking about another poster who said the school was going private and all girls. Of course that's not gonna happen. But UVA's female enrollment is greater than males only because nationally there are more women applying to college than men. UVA's admissions are gender blind; more women apply, more get in, more attend. Enrollment figures for W&M are 58/42 and not 70/30 only because the school actively discriminates against women applicants. Even its Dean of Admissions has stated that the school doesn't want to be known as the "College of Mary and Mary." https://www.vox.com/2015/2/17/8050259/discrimination-against-women-is-a-real-problem-in-college-admissions

And no one is saying that all men care about nothing but football and STEM. They're just saying that, generally speaking, MORE man care about that stuff then women do. And this is indeed a fact. It's why STEM-focused colleges are often EASIER on women, for pete's sake.

Some folks like to argue just for the sake of arguing.

[Anonymous]

You're an idiot. I said "certainly far fewer boys apply than girls," and you responded by talking about another poster who said the school was going private and all girls. Of course that's not gonna happen. But UVA's female enrollment is greater than males only because nationally there are more women applying to college than men. UVA's admissions are gender blind; more women apply, more get in, more attend. Enrollment figures for W&M are 58/42 and not 70/30 only because the school actively discriminates against women applicants. Even its Dean of Admissions has stated that the school doesn't want to be known as the "College of Mary and Mary." https://www.vox.com/2015/2/17/8050259/discriminati...-problem-in-college-admissions

And no one is saying that all men care about nothing but football and STEM. They're just saying that, generally speaking, MORE man care about that stuff then women do. And this is indeed a fact. It's why STEM-focused colleges are often EASIER on women, for pete's sake.

Some folks like to argue just for the sake of arguing.

No. You're an idiot!

Just to set the record straight. W&M does not "actively discriminate" against women applicants. All public institutions are by law (Title IX) gender blind. This is what Dean Broaddus had to say in reference to his "Mary and Mary" comment:

Interestingly, in response to the U.S. News article and its journalistic spawn, which cited that our admit rate was higher for male applicants than for female applicants, we ran additional numbers on admitted students for the year in question. We discovered that among males admitted to William and Mary, their mid-fiftieth percentile range on the SAT was slightly higher than the range for admitted females. The women, on the other hand, had a higher average rank in class.

This was not an engineered outcome or even something we calculated until the charge of gender bias was leveled, and I’m not inclined to read too much into it.

But we might suspect that our holistic, individual review rewards what can appear to a reader as untapped potential in certain young men even as the same process discounts what appears to be stronger achievement in the classroom by young women.

Whether that’s heightened by a committee’s interest in gender balance, the modest rarity of males in a pool that’s majority female, or a committee’s consideration of other factors such as extracurricular involvements and writing samples, I’d hesitate to say with any certainty.

What I can say is that our committee admits only those it believes will be successful at William and Mary, and our high retention rates show that we have an excellent track record by that measure. At a larger level, here’s what I personally believe about the matter of gender and college admissions:

1) I stand by the assertion that institutions that market themselves as coed, and believe that the pedagogical experiences they provide rely in part on a coed student body, have a legitimate interest in enrolling a class that is not disproportionately male or female. On a residential campus intended to foster community among a diverse group of students that includes both men and women, this interest strikes me as entirely appropriate.

2) I believe that self-selectivity within applicant pools is an often overlooked factor to consider. In the data U.S. News reported in its article, MIT exhibited the largest relative discrepancy between the admit rates (in 2006) for men (10%) and women (22%). Now, should the public believe that MIT’s admissions office holds its women to lower standards for admission than those employed for men? Of course not. Women who apply to MIT are a highly self-selected and academically capable group despite being a comparatively small group within that particular applicant pool.

3) I believe that the difference in admit rates alone as a basis for comparing any two groups within an applicant pool is overly reductive, because when it comes to the calculation of admit rate, the quality of the numerator matters far more than the size of the denominator. If we admit everyone with the surname Allen in our pool and nobody with the surname Smith, it’s just as likely to mean that the Allens were stronger applicants or that the Allens comprised a smaller group of applicants more prone to statistical inflation, than it is to mean we have any bias against Smiths.

But beyond the larger percentage of women in the W&M applicant pool, which we all concede, what's your point? Are you saying something about the overall quality of two very different institutions? Are you saying UVA is a paragon of virtue here and W&M is cynically manipulating the admit rates to get the balance they want? For both these schools the self selection that truly matters is an academic one.

Realistically no institution that practices holistic admissions is going to be either gender neutral or truly need blind no matter what they say. amiright?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

You're an idiot. I said "certainly far fewer boys apply than girls," and you responded by talking about another poster who said the school was going private and all girls. Of course that's not gonna happen. But UVA's female enrollment is greater than males only because nationally there are more women applying to college than men. UVA's admissions are gender blind; more women apply, more get in, more attend. Enrollment figures for W&M are 58/42 and not 70/30 only because the school actively discriminates against women applicants. Even its Dean of Admissions has stated that the school doesn't want to be known as the "College of Mary and Mary." https://www.vox.com/2015/2/17/8050259/discriminati...-problem-in-college-admissions

And no one is saying that all men care about nothing but football and STEM. They're just saying that, generally speaking, MORE man care about that stuff then women do. And this is indeed a fact. It's why STEM-focused colleges are often EASIER on women, for pete's sake.

Some folks like to argue just for the sake of arguing.

No. You're an idiot!

Just to set the record straight. W&M does not "actively discriminate" against women applicants. All public institutions are by law (Title IX) gender blind. This is what Dean Broaddus had to say in reference to his "Mary and Mary" comment:

Interestingly, in response to the U.S. News article and its journalistic spawn, which cited that our admit rate was higher for male applicants than for female applicants, we ran additional numbers on admitted students for the year in question. We discovered that among males admitted to William and Mary, their mid-fiftieth percentile range on the SAT was slightly higher than the range for admitted females. The women, on the other hand, had a higher average rank in class.

This was not an engineered outcome or even something we calculated until the charge of gender bias was leveled, and I’m not inclined to read too much into it.

But we might suspect that our holistic, individual review rewards what can appear to a reader as untapped potential in certain young men even as the same process discounts what appears to be stronger achievement in the classroom by young women.

Whether that’s heightened by a committee’s interest in gender balance, the modest rarity of males in a pool that’s majority female, or a committee’s consideration of other factors such as extracurricular involvements and writing samples, I’d hesitate to say with any certainty.

What I can say is that our committee admits only those it believes will be successful at William and Mary, and our high retention rates show that we have an excellent track record by that measure. At a larger level, here’s what I personally believe about the matter of gender and college admissions:

1) I stand by the assertion that institutions that market themselves as coed, and believe that the pedagogical experiences they provide rely in part on a coed student body, have a legitimate interest in enrolling a class that is not disproportionately male or female. On a residential campus intended to foster community among a diverse group of students that includes both men and women, this interest strikes me as entirely appropriate.

2) I believe that self-selectivity within applicant pools is an often overlooked factor to consider. In the data U.S. News reported in its article, MIT exhibited the largest relative discrepancy between the admit rates (in 2006) for men (10%) and women (22%). Now, should the public believe that MIT’s admissions office holds its women to lower standards for admission than those employed for men? Of course not. Women who apply to MIT are a highly self-selected and academically capable group despite being a comparatively small group within that particular applicant pool.

3) I believe that the difference in admit rates alone as a basis for comparing any two groups within an applicant pool is overly reductive, because when it comes to the calculation of admit rate, the quality of the numerator matters far more than the size of the denominator. If we admit everyone with the surname Allen in our pool and nobody with the surname Smith, it’s just as likely to mean that the Allens were stronger applicants or that the Allens comprised a smaller group of applicants more prone to statistical inflation, than it is to mean we have any bias against Smiths.

But beyond the larger percentage of women in the W&M applicant pool, which we all concede, what's your point? Are you saying something about the overall quality of two very different institutions? Are you saying UVA is a paragon of virtue here and W&M is cynically manipulating the admit rates to get the balance they want? For both these schools the self selection that truly matters is an academic one.

Realistically no institution that practices holistic admissions is going to be either gender neutral or truly need blind no matter what they say. amiright?

I'm certainly not saying that UVA is a paragon of virtue about anything. But I AM saying that William & Mary is absolutely, positively tipping the scale heavily in favor of male applicants in order to maintain as even a male/female split on campus as possible -- and even there it's not doing all that well. Year after year of data leaves no doubt that many more women are interested in the school than men, and given the school's academic reputation it's hard to believe that, year after year, thousands more less qualified women than men are applying to the school. Why exactly do YOU think that, year after year, a much higher percentage of men are admitted than women? How do YOU explain it? Holistic admissions? Sure, but holistic admissions that TAKE GENDER INTO ACCOUNT as part of a holistic review.

UVA is on record as being gender neutral on admissions. William and Mary is not. And when the Justice Department started looking as schools for possible discrimination, William and Mary was the ONLY public school that became part of the inquiry. So I'm not the only one who thinks the numbers look funny.

Finally, no I don't think the quality of the schools is that different. All I think is that it's unfair for a state institution to give preference to an applicant with a penis.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Air conditioners not provided by the university". Wash & Lee. They have an allergy exception for window A/Cs. https://www.wlu.edu/student-life/residential-life/upper-division-housing/faqs/upper-division-housing-faqs

Yes, by all means if you can’t afford a $200 air conditioner for the tiny minority of housing options that aren’t AC’ed look elsewhere. Sad that someone posted about their kid getting into this fine school and people can’t resist being mean. But hey, welcome to DCUM.

You're not allowed AC in the dorms unless you get allergy clearance. Would you like to talk instead about General Lee's horse?

The dorms are air conditioned. All of them.

No they are not. "A/C not provided by the university". https://www.wlu.edu/student-life/residential-life/upper-division-housing/faqs/upper-division-housing-faqs#AC%20Install

Just fraternities and theme houses, not dorms. But keep beating this drum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

You're an idiot. I said "certainly far fewer boys apply than girls," and you responded by talking about another poster who said the school was going private and all girls. Of course that's not gonna happen. But UVA's female enrollment is greater than males only because nationally there are more women applying to college than men. UVA's admissions are gender blind; more women apply, more get in, more attend. Enrollment figures for W&M are 58/42 and not 70/30 only because the school actively discriminates against women applicants. Even its Dean of Admissions has stated that the school doesn't want to be known as the "College of Mary and Mary." https://www.vox.com/2015/2/17/8050259/discriminati...-problem-in-college-admissions

And no one is saying that all men care about nothing but football and STEM. They're just saying that, generally speaking, MORE man care about that stuff then women do. And this is indeed a fact. It's why STEM-focused colleges are often EASIER on women, for pete's sake.

Some folks like to argue just for the sake of arguing.

No. You're an idiot!

Just to set the record straight. W&M does not "actively discriminate" against women applicants. All public institutions are by law (Title IX) gender blind. This is what Dean Broaddus had to say in reference to his "Mary and Mary" comment:

Interestingly, in response to the U.S. News article and its journalistic spawn, which cited that our admit rate was higher for male applicants than for female applicants, we ran additional numbers on admitted students for the year in question. We discovered that among males admitted to William and Mary, their mid-fiftieth percentile range on the SAT was slightly higher than the range for admitted females. The women, on the other hand, had a higher average rank in class.

This was not an engineered outcome or even something we calculated until the charge of gender bias was leveled, and I’m not inclined to read too much into it.

But we might suspect that our holistic, individual review rewards what can appear to a reader as untapped potential in certain young men even as the same process discounts what appears to be stronger achievement in the classroom by young women.

Whether that’s heightened by a committee’s interest in gender balance, the modest rarity of males in a pool that’s majority female, or a committee’s consideration of other factors such as extracurricular involvements and writing samples, I’d hesitate to say with any certainty.

What I can say is that our committee admits only those it believes will be successful at William and Mary, and our high retention rates show that we have an excellent track record by that measure. At a larger level, here’s what I personally believe about the matter of gender and college admissions:

1) I stand by the assertion that institutions that market themselves as coed, and believe that the pedagogical experiences they provide rely in part on a coed student body, have a legitimate interest in enrolling a class that is not disproportionately male or female. On a residential campus intended to foster community among a diverse group of students that includes both men and women, this interest strikes me as entirely appropriate.

2) I believe that self-selectivity within applicant pools is an often overlooked factor to consider. In the data U.S. News reported in its article, MIT exhibited the largest relative discrepancy between the admit rates (in 2006) for men (10%) and women (22%). Now, should the public believe that MIT’s admissions office holds its women to lower standards for admission than those employed for men? Of course not. Women who apply to MIT are a highly self-selected and academically capable group despite being a comparatively small group within that particular applicant pool.

3) I believe that the difference in admit rates alone as a basis for comparing any two groups within an applicant pool is overly reductive, because when it comes to the calculation of admit rate, the quality of the numerator matters far more than the size of the denominator. If we admit everyone with the surname Allen in our pool and nobody with the surname Smith, it’s just as likely to mean that the Allens were stronger applicants or that the Allens comprised a smaller group of applicants more prone to statistical inflation, than it is to mean we have any bias against Smiths.

But beyond the larger percentage of women in the W&M applicant pool, which we all concede, what's your point? Are you saying something about the overall quality of two very different institutions? Are you saying UVA is a paragon of virtue here and W&M is cynically manipulating the admit rates to get the balance they want? For both these schools the self selection that truly matters is an academic one.

Realistically no institution that practices holistic admissions is going to be either gender neutral or truly need blind no matter what they say. amiright?

I'm certainly not saying that UVA is a paragon of virtue about anything. But I AM saying that William & Mary is absolutely, positively tipping the scale heavily in favor of male applicants in order to maintain as even a male/female split on campus as possible -- and even there it's not doing all that well. Year after year of data leaves no doubt that many more women are interested in the school than men, and given the school's academic reputation it's hard to believe that, year after year, thousands more less qualified women than men are applying to the school. Why exactly do YOU think that, year after year, a much higher percentage of men are admitted than women? How do YOU explain it? Holistic admissions? Sure, but holistic admissions that TAKE GENDER INTO ACCOUNT as part of a holistic review.

UVA is on record as being gender neutral on admissions. William and Mary is not. And when the Justice Department started looking as schools for possible discrimination, William and Mary was the ONLY public school that became part of the inquiry. So I'm not the only one who thinks the numbers look funny.

Finally, no I don't think the quality of the schools is that different. All I think is that it's unfair for a state institution to give preference to an applicant with a penis.

New poster here. I think you're being overly dramatic here about WM actively discriminating... I also read that same article you're talking about the dean saying it didn't want to be known as Mary & Mary. The dean did say that ave gpa for girls admitted is slightly higher than boys (4.1 v 4.2) but he also said in that same article that the ave SAT score was higher for boys than girls. And if it is slightly easier to get into WM for boys, this is very typical of all LACs and very typical of girls having an easier time getting into stem/tech focused schools.

[Anonymous]

I'm certainly not saying that UVA is a paragon of virtue about anything. But I AM saying that William & Mary is absolutely, positively tipping the scale heavily in favor of male applicants in order to maintain as even a male/female split on campus as possible -- and even there it's not doing all that well. Year after year of data leaves no doubt that many more women are interested in the school than men, and given the school's academic reputation it's hard to believe that, year after year, thousands more less qualified women than men are applying to the school. Why exactly do YOU think that, year after year, a much higher percentage of men are admitted than women? How do YOU explain it? Holistic admissions? Sure, but holistic admissions that TAKE GENDER INTO ACCOUNT as part of a holistic review.

UVA is on record as being gender neutral on admissions. William and Mary is not. And when the Justice Department started looking as schools for possible discrimination, William and Mary was the ONLY public school that became part of the inquiry. So I'm not the only one who thinks the numbers look funny.

Finally, no I don't think the quality of the schools is that different. All I think is that it's unfair for a state institution to give preference to an applicant with a penis.

Okay, fair enough! Is there any way in your opinion to get boys more interested in LACs? LAC's do pure science very well. The W&M Physics department is fantastic, for example. Biology too. I'm sure other top LAC's also have their strengths in the pure sciences. All the focus today seems to be on the applied sciences. Do boys value a direct link to the job market more than girls do? Perhaps the focus on the applied sciences is a logical outcome of the technological society we live in. On the whole, LAC's do undergraduate education much better than research universities. I don't have a DS, but if I did, I'd be directing him toward an LAC.

[Anonymous]

How about a separate thread for the VA schools? I know there are many VA parents on here and so I am sure there are many kids headed to VA schools but it is not very interesting or helpful for people who are not considering VA schools when you have two pages of posts about the differences between the VA schools
MD parent

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I'm certainly not saying that UVA is a paragon of virtue about anything. But I AM saying that William & Mary is absolutely, positively tipping the scale heavily in favor of male applicants in order to maintain as even a male/female split on campus as possible -- and even there it's not doing all that well. Year after year of data leaves no doubt that many more women are interested in the school than men, and given the school's academic reputation it's hard to believe that, year after year, thousands more less qualified women than men are applying to the school. Why exactly do YOU think that, year after year, a much higher percentage of men are admitted than women? How do YOU explain it? Holistic admissions? Sure, but holistic admissions that TAKE GENDER INTO ACCOUNT as part of a holistic review.

UVA is on record as being gender neutral on admissions. William and Mary is not. And when the Justice Department started looking as schools for possible discrimination, William and Mary was the ONLY public school that became part of the inquiry. So I'm not the only one who thinks the numbers look funny.

Finally, no I don't think the quality of the schools is that different. All I think is that it's unfair for a state institution to give preference to an applicant with a penis.

Okay, fair enough! Is there any way in your opinion to get boys more interested in LACs? LAC's do pure science very well. The W&M Physics department is fantastic, for example. Biology too. I'm sure other top LAC's also have their strengths in the pure sciences. All the focus today seems to be on the applied sciences. Do boys value a direct link to the job market more than girls do? Perhaps the focus on the applied sciences is a logical outcome of the technological society we live in. On the whole, LAC's do undergraduate education much better than research universities. I don't have a DS, but if I did, I'd be directing him toward an LAC.

I have a ds and he is not looking at an LACs because he is looking at schools that offer more hands-on learning, like focus on research, internship, co-ops, labs, projects...because he is not a strong auditory learner. Sitting in a class room being lectured at and taking notes is not ideal for him. I have no idea if this has anything to do with boys in general not being as interested in LACs but it is a fact that this type of learning (auditory lecture based) is more conducive to girls than boys.

[Anonymous]

Swarthmore

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Swarthmore

Congratulations to your kid. What major?