Is the boy:girl ratio at the liberal arts colleges a deterrent at all?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Any off-the-top examples of decent schools with more of a 50/50 breakdown?

Swarthmore 49/51
Amherst 48/52
Williams 50/50
Bowdoin 49/51
Carnegie Mellon 50/50
Princeton 49/51
Dartmouth 51/49
Mit 52/48

Just a few….

Go to a good school and it’ll be 50/50

The odds are good, but the goods are odd

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UVA is 56% female, which is more imbalanced than my son’s SLAC.

That’s because UVA must take two-thirds of their students from VA. If that constraint didn’t exist, they could balance the gender, especially with 50,000 applicants.

Um you are missing the point. The topic of this thread is whether this is particularly a liberal arts college issue. It is not.

UCLA by the way is only 41% male.

[Anonymous]

I went to an engineering school with 5 guys to every 1 girl. It wasn't good. It led to a lot of frustration and drinking and an unhealthy dynamic.

I was a woman and felt like I had to have a boyfriend or there was a relentless onslaught. The day I broke up with my boyfriend of two years I was asked out 16 times in a single day--i don't even know how they all had found out I was single. Then several guys who I thought were just good friends got pissed I turned them down and dropped me as a friend altogether. (Mind you I turned everyone down. I'd just broken up with a serious boyfriend hours earlier.) It really sucked.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UVA is 56% female, which is more imbalanced than my son’s SLAC.

That’s because UVA must take two-thirds of their students from VA. If that constraint didn’t exist, they could balance the gender, especially with 50,000 applicants.

Um you are missing the point. The topic of this thread is whether this is particularly a liberal arts college issue. It is not.

UCLA by the way is only 41% male.

But understanding the dynamics of what causes these imbalances could be helpful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Any off-the-top examples of decent schools with more of a 50/50 breakdown?

Swarthmore 49/51
Amherst 48/52
Williams 50/50
Bowdoin 49/51
Carnegie Mellon 50/50
Princeton 49/51
Dartmouth 51/49
Mit 52/48

Just a few….

Go to a good school and it’ll be 50/50

The odds are good, but the goods are odd

No, go to one of the tippy top schools and it will be 50/50. Lots of very good schools have more females, and some very good tech schools have more males.

[Anonymous]

Rutgers is 50/50

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The most sought after schools have the luxury of emphasizing both grades/stats and gender. However, less sought after schools are at the mercy of current demographic - more women are attending college than men - and major trends - a lot of boys want CS or engineering while many girls still want traditional liberal arts majors. Thus, the boy/girl ratio gets particularly lopsided at less selective schools, liberal arts schools, and technical colleges.

Here’s your guide. The other posts are just examples of these dynamics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UVA is 56% female, which is more imbalanced than my son’s SLAC.

That’s because UVA must take two-thirds of their students from VA. If that constraint didn’t exist, they could balance the gender, especially with 50,000 applicants.

Um you are missing the point. The topic of this thread is whether this is particularly a liberal arts college issue. It is not.

UCLA by the way is only 41% male.

But understanding the dynamics of what causes these imbalances could be helpful.

Well I don’t think it’s correct that UVA can’t be 50/50 because they are constrained by their 2/3 in state rule. There is no evidence of that and it doesn’t make sense. Presumably they could admit 50/50 in state applicants and 50/50 out of state applicants.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It matters for admission. It is harder for females to get in to the schools where the ratio is more pronounced. Conn College for example.

How did you come to this conclusion? I'm the PP who looked into this and the stats from Conn College's 2020 Common Data Set suggest otherwise. 59% of applicants were women, 65% of accepted students were women, and 62% of the entering class were women. Obviously this doesn't show whether *more* female applicants were more highly qualified than male applicants, but it does show that on average Conn College accepted a higher proportion of female applicants than male applicants. So it's not obvious that it's harder to get in as a woman, and it may actually be easier to get in.

I was surprised that this is pretty consistent with many schools - there are more female applicants all around and for many schools that translates to more female admits and more female entering students.

You're right you can't conclude from that data that it's harder to get in as a girl, but everyone I know in admissions says point blank that it is. Girls are generally stronger candidates than boys. That holds true at every level, from very competitive colleges to less competitive ones.

LOL. "Everyone I know in admissions." Like, how many is that?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Went to a large state school with 60:40 girls:boys ratio. Ended up with boyfriend who was frankly not at my level and yes it had an impact. That being said, it wasn't a key factor in my college decision and that's an age to make mistakes and learn what you like, not an age to settle down.

JMU skews female (perhaps because of its origins as a teacher's college), and my DS likes it there.

+1
Same with my son. I believe all the VA state universities skew female - maybe not VT.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Any off-the-top examples of decent schools with more of a 50/50 breakdown?

Swarthmore 49/51
Amherst 48/52
Williams 50/50
Bowdoin 49/51
Carnegie Mellon 50/50
Princeton 49/51
Dartmouth 51/49
Mit 52/48

Just a few….

Go to a good school and it’ll be 50/50

The odds are good, but the goods are odd

And today's award for originality goes to . . . not you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I went to an engineering school with 5 guys to every 1 girl. It wasn't good. It led to a lot of frustration and drinking and an unhealthy dynamic.

I was a woman and felt like I had to have a boyfriend or there was a relentless onslaught. The day I broke up with my boyfriend of two years I was asked out 16 times in a single day--i don't even know how they all had found out I was single. Then several guys who I thought were just good friends got pissed I turned them down and dropped me as a friend altogether. (Mind you I turned everyone down. I'd just broken up with a serious boyfriend hours earlier.) It really sucked.

This would have been my dream when I was in college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UVA is 56% female, which is more imbalanced than my son’s SLAC.

That’s because UVA must take two-thirds of their students from VA. If that constraint didn’t exist, they could balance the gender, especially with 50,000 applicants.

Um you are missing the point. The topic of this thread is whether this is particularly a liberal arts college issue. It is not.

UCLA by the way is only 41% male.

But understanding the dynamics of what causes these imbalances could be helpful.

Well I don’t think it’s correct that UVA can’t be 50/50 because they are constrained by their 2/3 in state rule. There is no evidence of that and it doesn’t make sense. Presumably they could admit 50/50 in state applicants and 50/50 out of state applicants.

DP. I has nothing to do with the state residency requirements. It's because it's a state school and can't discriminate on the basis of sex in admissions. More women apply; on average they're equally qualified to the men; more women are therefore admitted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is JMU still way off kilter?

All of these schools skew female:

UVA - 55w/45m
JMU - 59w/41m
George Mason - 53w/47m
Christopher Newport - 56w/44m
VCU - 60w/40m
W&M - 56w/44m

VT is the only one with more men:
43w/57m

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is JMU still way off kilter?

All of these schools skew female:

UVA - 55w/45m
JMU - 59w/41m
George Mason - 53w/47m
Christopher Newport - 56w/44m
VCU - 60w/40m
W&M - 56w/44m

VT is the only one with more men:
43w/57m

Again, they are state schools. Title IX prohibits gender discrimination in undergraduate admissions in state colleges, but not private colleges. So, if more women apply, more are accepted. Tech's STEM focus attracts many more male applicants than women.