Easier for girls to get into top engineering schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Compared to boys, still true?

Think Vanderbilt, MiT, CMU, Duke, Penn, Michigan?
Naviance shows my DD’s safeties as UVA, Michigan, Pitt and penn state. Can Naviancd be trusted? How is UVA a safety for out of state students? Yes she has rigorous courses, high stats..

Per our private school counselor who used to work at a T10 school with engineering and other subjects, there are only a few schools left where females hae somewhat easier admission. These are MIT, CMU, Caltech , GT and UCB. The ivies,Duke, Hopkinsare where almost every top female engineering applicant prefers over MIT/CMU/GT/UCB. Mine decided not apply to any of those due to too tech-y or too big before CCO relayed that. These schools like other schools have about 55-58% of their total napplicants female, and for the E-school divisions the applicants are about 40-45% female the past 3 cycles or more, mostly BME/BE/Environmental. These top schools target 40-45% female in all Engineering majors combined, thus they can easily have the similar admit rates for females and males and get the ratio they desire. MIT still 65:35 male to female applicants but it has tightened up a lot as it was 3:1 a 15 yrs ago. This data is from the entering class of 2023 and 2024. DD25 just went through it as an Engineering applicant. She got into one less T10 than the prior year top engineering kid who was male. At her own high school three of the top five females her year were targeting ivy/duke specifially for engineering. IT is not an engineering or stem school! Like her, they wanted balanced academics with interdisciplinary opportunities and lots of music options at a small to medium school. Swarthmore was also on the list. She got in to two top 10: one ivy and one not. The top male(engineer) with slightly lower GPA (ranked 3rd) and also above 1550 got in to two ivies, one inside the T10 and one not.
Bottom line talk to your high school but being female is not a boost. Asian female in Stem is particularly hard, just as Asian male is. Ours is white and so was the top male. maybe that helped though it is supposed to be race blind now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Compared to boys, still true?

Think Vanderbilt, MiT, CMU, Duke, Penn, Michigan?
Naviance shows my DD’s safeties as UVA, Michigan, Pitt and penn state. Can Naviancd be trusted? How is UVA a safety for out of state students? Yes she has rigorous courses, high stats..

Per our private school counselor who used to work at a T10 school with engineering and other subjects, there are only a few schools left where females hae somewhat easier admission. These are MIT, CMU, Caltech , GT and UCB. The ivies,Duke, Hopkinsare where almost every top female engineering applicant prefers over MIT/CMU/GT/UCB. Mine decided not apply to any of those due to too tech-y or too big before CCO relayed that. These schools like other schools have about 55-58% of their total napplicants female, and for the E-school divisions the applicants are about 40-45% female the past 3 cycles or more, mostly BME/BE/Environmental. These top schools target 40-45% female in all Engineering majors combined, thus they can easily have the similar admit rates for females and males and get the ratio they desire. …Ours is white and so was the top male. maybe that helped though it is supposed to be race blind now.

It parallels what ours has experienced. D2023 is at an ivy in engineering and almost every one of her female friends was their school Val or Sal with every stem AP on their resume. The ivy had a welcome to engineering event for freshman parents and they mentioned highest % females in the application pool and noted many majors within engineering are 60% female now, but the overall is 42%. They actually said we no longer have to worry not enough females apply we have plenty. They said their grad school remains 60% male for engineering

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our daughter did not get into Duke, Vandy, Penn, Michigan OOS for engineering/CS. High stats (1500+) and highest rigor for her school. Good ECs but not great for STEM. I thought being a girl would help but these schools are just incredibly tough for these majors.
She got merit from Pitt, Lehigh, Case for engineering.

Applying from a private or public HS? Girls with top STEM rigor and stats from top privates get into engineering at those schools

Yup a public. Sigh. Privilege pays I guess!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As an MIT alum interviewer, let me shed some light on the MYTH of easier admittance for girls.

Yes, a higher % of female applicants gain admission. What you don't see is the noticeable fraction of unqualified applicants (e.g., kids who like video games and are encouraged by clueless relatives to apply to MIT). This misguided group is virtually all male. Bizarre phenomenon.

+1

[Anonymous]

My girls are in public school as well. I would say that there is an advantage in that they stand out from their peers. At my kids' high school, only 5 out of 25 kids taking AP Physics C are girls. That said, I think there are a lot of great schools for engineering and you're DD will be fine if they apply widely. There are many excellent programs, including Olin, Harvey Mudd, UIUC, Purdue.

My DD has a 4.0 UW and 1550+ and 7 AP scores (taking 6 more this year) and her CC says that UMich OOS, UVA OOS, UCB OOS and UCLA OOS are all targets, not safeties.

[Anonymous]

I'm very glad to read that women are gaining ground.

My sister is an Ivy engineer. I went to MBA school when it was 30% female.

It really matters that women are educated to aspire to the full range of professions.

Good luck to your DDs in finding great schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our daughter did not get into Duke, Vandy, Penn, Michigan OOS for engineering/CS. High stats (1500+) and highest rigor for her school. Good ECs but not great for STEM. I thought being a girl would help but these schools are just incredibly tough for these majors.
She got merit from Pitt, Lehigh, Case for engineering.

Ours is at one of those privates and also was accepted to the other privates plus another top one. The women at her college were all top stem, they won very similar stem awards at their high school as well as at least state or even national level. Most also seem to have a non-stem EC that they got accolades for , ie debate or music at states, concertmaster, similar. They all did stem research in high school. D was amazed there were so many cracked kids. The males are too but fewer were valedictorian which is interesting. Something about stem attracts top top performing females yet attracts a broader group of males.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My girls are in public school as well. I would say that there is an advantage in that they stand out from their peers. At my kids' high school, only 5 out of 25 kids taking AP Physics C are girls. That said, I think there are a lot of great schools for engineering and you're DD will be fine if they apply widely. There are many excellent programs, including Olin, Harvey Mudd, UIUC, Purdue.

My DD has a 4.0 UW and 1550+ and 7 AP scores (taking 6 more this year) and her CC says that UMich OOS, UVA OOS, UCB OOS and UCLA OOS are all targets, not safeties.

Ours had about 5 females and 12 males in Physics C. Small private. The 5 females were all very top of the class. Only two of the males were top of the class (the top 5 females and top 5 males at the end of junior year are given awards)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As an MIT alum interviewer, let me shed some light on the MYTH of easier admittance for girls.

Yes, a higher % of female applicants gain admission. What you don't see is the noticeable fraction of unqualified applicants (e.g., kids who like video games and are encouraged by clueless relatives to apply to MIT). This misguided group is virtually all male. Bizarre phenomenon.

Nonsense!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our daughter did not get into Duke, Vandy, Penn, Michigan OOS for engineering/CS. High stats (1500+) and highest rigor for her school. Good ECs but not great for STEM. I thought being a girl would help but these schools are just incredibly tough for these majors.
She got merit from Pitt, Lehigh, Case for engineering.

Ours is at one of those privates and also was accepted to the other privates plus another top one. The women at her college were all top stem, they won very similar stem awards at their high school as well as at least state or even national level. Most also seem to have a non-stem EC that they got accolades for , ie debate or music at states, concertmaster, similar. They all did stem research in high school. D was amazed there were so many cracked kids. The males are too but fewer were valedictorian which is interesting. Something about stem attracts top top performing females yet attracts a broader group of males.

Top top performing females have the high math SATs and prep to be comfortable taking engineering classes. Without that solid background, the student will flounder and a lot of women know to avoid floundering. I believe there's still a gender skew among top math SAT scorers, with more males at the top end. Which is probably why they still double the verbal to get National Merit Finalists (so you won't notice the gender skew, and NMFs aren't all math nerds). In a related shocking note, it might even be possible to reverse or limit the gender skew on the SAT just by choosing to ask more of the problem types where females outperform males. There has been research on that but it has not been widely reported and it is old. The faster pace of test change and Covid and more cheating scandals means that only College Board can have a good idea on where things are headed. They certainly are restricting the amount of official digital test prep available these days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My girls are in public school as well. I would say that there is an advantage in that they stand out from their peers. At my kids' high school, only 5 out of 25 kids taking AP Physics C are girls. That said, I think there are a lot of great schools for engineering and you're DD will be fine if they apply widely. There are many excellent programs, including Olin, Harvey Mudd, UIUC, Purdue.

My DD has a 4.0 UW and 1550+ and 7 AP scores (taking 6 more this year) and her CC says that UMich OOS, UVA OOS, UCB OOS and UCLA OOS are all targets, not safeties.

UMich, UVA, UCB, UCLA are reaches for all applicants, not targets.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As an MIT alum interviewer, let me shed some light on the MYTH of easier admittance for girls.

Yes, a higher % of female applicants gain admission. What you don't see is the noticeable fraction of unqualified applicants (e.g., kids who like video games and are encouraged by clueless relatives to apply to MIT). This misguided group is virtually all male. Bizarre phenomenon.

Those video game males are bottom applicants and irrelevant. What matters is the top 2% of applicants. Top 2% of male applicants are extremely strong at math. Look at who is winning the hardest math and programming competitions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My girls are in public school as well. I would say that there is an advantage in that they stand out from their peers. At my kids' high school, only 5 out of 25 kids taking AP Physics C are girls. That said, I think there are a lot of great schools for engineering and you're DD will be fine if they apply widely. There are many excellent programs, including Olin, Harvey Mudd, UIUC, Purdue.

My DD has a 4.0 UW and 1550+ and 7 AP scores (taking 6 more this year) and her CC says that UMich OOS, UVA OOS, UCB OOS and UCLA OOS are all targets, not safeties.

UMich, UVA, UCB, UCLA are reaches for all applicants, not targets.

No, they are not, it depends on high school. For top males and females at our high school as well as the neighboring school, Umich UCB UCLA are targets . UVA is instate and is a safety for the very top. Every kid in the top 5% for more than 6 years has gotten into UVA, and all but one in the top 10%. 30-40% of applicants in the top5% get in to the other three OOS. They are targets. Certain ivies ED (cornell, columbia) in the past 2 cycles are targets for the very top. The very top usually try scea though and wait for RD for other ivies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As an MIT alum interviewer, let me shed some light on the MYTH of easier admittance for girls.

Yes, a higher % of female applicants gain admission. What you don't see is the noticeable fraction of unqualified applicants (e.g., kids who like video games and are encouraged by clueless relatives to apply to MIT). This misguided group is virtually all male. Bizarre phenomenon.

Those video game males are bottom applicants and irrelevant. What matters is the top 2% of applicants. Top 2% of male applicants are extremely strong at math. Look at who is winning the hardest math and programming competitions.

You are missing the point. DP. PP was explaining that the whole pool is different. Admitting 2% of the male applicants when a significant portion of them are noticeably unqualified, yet admitting 3% of the female pool when almost none are unqualified means the admission rates of the qualified males v females is about the same, depending on the size of the unqualified male subset. The "listed" % admission for male v female does not tell the story.
PP is not the first one I have heard explain the same, and it correlates with the local stem magnet. About 1/3 are females. They apply in 8th. The male v female SAT range total is the same (median is 1500 so it is a highly skewed group of students, they are all very intelligent). The females dominate the top 25%, which is announced senior year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My girls are in public school as well. I would say that there is an advantage in that they stand out from their peers. At my kids' high school, only 5 out of 25 kids taking AP Physics C are girls. That said, I think there are a lot of great schools for engineering and you're DD will be fine if they apply widely. There are many excellent programs, including Olin, Harvey Mudd, UIUC, Purdue.

My DD has a 4.0 UW and 1550+ and 7 AP scores (taking 6 more this year) and her CC says that UMich OOS, UVA OOS, UCB OOS and UCLA OOS are all targets, not safeties.

UMich, UVA, UCB, UCLA are reaches for all applicants, not targets.

No, they are not, it depends on high school. For top males and females at our high school as well as the neighboring school, Umich UCB UCLA are targets . UVA is instate and is a safety for the very top. Every kid in the top 5% for more than 6 years has gotten into UVA, and all but one in the top 10%. 30-40% of applicants in the top5% get in to the other three OOS. They are targets. Certain ivies ED (cornell, columbia) in the past 2 cycles are targets for the very top. The very top usually try scea though and wait for RD for other ivies.

No normal person defines schools with <10% acceptance rates as targets... except here at DCUM.