Honestly the number most fascinating to me is the large percentage of those accepted to the very top schools that are LGBTQ. I don't think it has anything to do with admissions per se, as many were not out in HS, but for both of my kids that attended different schools, we are talking large percentages of the top 5 percent of the class attending Ivy's or close - well over 50 percent are LGBTQ. I'm not sure what to say, except it's ...interesting.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's the opposite usually for our school. And according to our college counselor, if you are a girl and are interested in engineering at a top college, it is much easier for admission.

Girls have an advantage at STEM schools (MIT, CalTech, Harvey Mudd, etc.), but boys have an advantage at most others. This is especially true at private liberal arts colleges such as Wesleyan and Pomona.

Pomona has 0 admissions boost for men

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I actually don't see it with kids for the top schools because they are all 50/50. Even MIT is 50/50.

I see it more at the tiers of 20+...places like Tulane that are 63% female and even many of the flagships that tend to have far more females applying and attending.

They are 50/50 because they accept more male applicants, there are less of them.

Here are some samples from the most recent CDS:

Princeton: 20,100 F applying / 19,500 M applying
Brown: 31,650 F applying / 19,666 m applying
Cornell: 34,172 F / 33,674 M
Dartmouth: 15,325 F / 13,516 M
Harvard: 30,363 F / 26,301 M
MIT: 8,939 F / 16,568 M
Stanford: 26,600 F / 27,133 M
Penn: 32,137 F / 27,128 M

So, seems like a definite advantage for men at Brown and definite advantage at MIT for women. Slight advantage for men at Harvard and Penn

This assumes that the average male and female applicant is approximately equal in qualifications. If female applicants are stronger on average (as evidence suggests they are), the shares by gender don't fully reflect the disparity.

T20 is top 2% of college students. I'm not sure there are more girls in that 2%, especially in STEM. Maybe by GPA. But at our school it's mostly boys winning the EC math and hacking competitions. Same thing with the competitive robotics team. There are many girls on the team, including "leadership positions", but the "hotshot" programmers who write the winning code are mostly boys.

At our high school the most talented person on the robotics team is a female student (won Top 10 award at Worlds last year).

Anonymous wrote:

Here are some samples from the most recent CDS:

Princeton: 20,100 F applying / 19,500 M applying
Brown: 31,650 F applying / 19,666 m applying
Cornell: 34,172 F / 33,674 M
Dartmouth: 15,325 F / 13,516 M
Harvard: 30,363 F / 26,301 M
MIT: 8,939 F / 16,568 M
Stanford: 26,600 F / 27,133 M
Penn: 32,137 F / 27,128 M

Where is Columbia and Yale in all of this?

Google the CDS for both and report back.

Here are some samples from the most recent CDS:

Princeton: 20,100 F applying / 19,500 M applying
Brown: 31,650 F applying / 19,666 m applying
Cornell: 34,172 F / 33,674 M
Dartmouth: 15,325 F / 13,516 M
Harvard: 30,363 F / 26,301 M
MIT: 8,939 F / 16,568 M
Stanford: 26,600 F / 27,133 M
Penn: 32,137 F / 27,128 M

Where is Columbia and Yale in all of this?

Anonymous wrote:It's the opposite usually for our school. And according to our college counselor, if you are a girl and are interested in engineering at a top college, it is much easier for admission.

Girls have an advantage at STEM schools (MIT, CalTech, Harvey Mudd, etc.), but boys have an advantage at most others. This is especially true at private liberal arts colleges such as Wesleyan and Pomona.

It's the opposite usually for our school. And according to our college counselor, if you are a girl and are interested in engineering at a top college, it is much easier for admission.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I actually don't see it with kids for the top schools because they are all 50/50. Even MIT is 50/50.

I see it more at the tiers of 20+...places like Tulane that are 63% female and even many of the flagships that tend to have far more females applying and attending.

They are 50/50 because they accept more male applicants, there are less of them.

Here are some samples from the most recent CDS:

Princeton: 20,100 F applying / 19,500 M applying
Brown: 31,650 F applying / 19,666 m applying
Cornell: 34,172 F / 33,674 M
Dartmouth: 15,325 F / 13,516 M
Harvard: 30,363 F / 26,301 M
MIT: 8,939 F / 16,568 M
Stanford: 26,600 F / 27,133 M
Penn: 32,137 F / 27,128 M

So, seems like a definite advantage for men at Brown and definite advantage at MIT for women. Slight advantage for men at Harvard and Penn

Also, international applicants skew male, so the pool of domestic male applicants is even lower.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I actually don't see it with kids for the top schools because they are all 50/50. Even MIT is 50/50.

I see it more at the tiers of 20+...places like Tulane that are 63% female and even many of the flagships that tend to have far more females applying and attending.

They are 50/50 because they accept more male applicants, there are less of them.

Here are some samples from the most recent CDS:

Princeton: 20,100 F applying / 19,500 M applying
Brown: 31,650 F applying / 19,666 m applying
Cornell: 34,172 F / 33,674 M
Dartmouth: 15,325 F / 13,516 M
Harvard: 30,363 F / 26,301 M
MIT: 8,939 F / 16,568 M
Stanford: 26,600 F / 27,133 M
Penn: 32,137 F / 27,128 M

So, seems like a definite advantage for men at Brown and definite advantage at MIT for women. Slight advantage for men at Harvard and Penn

This assumes that the average male and female applicant is approximately equal in qualifications. If female applicants are stronger on average (as evidence suggests they are), the shares by gender don't fully reflect the disparity.

T20 is top 2% of college students. I'm not sure there are more girls in that 2%, especially in STEM. Maybe by GPA. But at our school it's mostly boys winning the EC math and hacking competitions. Same thing with the competitive robotics team. There are many girls on the team, including "leadership positions", but the "hotshot" programmers who write the winning code are mostly boys.

At our high school the most talented person on the robotics team is a female student (won Top 10 award at Worlds last year). Mentorship and group dynamics are critical. I just judged a First Lego League competition and there were many mixed gender teams (4th-5th grade). Some teams are balanced. But there definitely are teams where the little boys do not shut up and try to hog all the airtime during the judging process. Not true of the girl spokespeople I saw.

My son has recruited two female friends onto the high school team and one is already well ahead of him because she's ultra intense. There is not an even split of gender on this team but it seems to be free of sexism that impacts learning and performance.

I was just pushing back on the assumption a poster made that there are more strong girls in the top 2%. That's a big assumption and I have seen some evidence that doesn't match that. I'm not making any big claims, just being skeptical of others making big claims.

OK, point taken. Just don't assume it's the coders that win the day for the robotics teams. The build quality, the drivers, and pit crew are also critical.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Larla: It's not fair that I need better grades and ECs than boys to be admitted to the same schools.

Also Larla: I refuse to attend any school that's not at least 45% male.

Sorry, Larla.

Said literally no woman ever. We’re keeping the male population up at these schools because parents are obsessive about their boys having boy friends: read the 100s of posts here about their DS “fitting in” at any college that isn’t 50% male.

So your theory is that schools are admitting more (weaker) boys so that they'll be able to continue attracting (weaker) boys? Okaaaaay

NP but yes, this is exactly what schools outside of the top 10 or so are doing (and maybe even in the top 10).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Larla: It's not fair that I need better grades and ECs than boys to be admitted to the same schools.

Also Larla: I refuse to attend any school that's not at least 45% male.

Sorry, Larla.

Said literally no woman ever. We’re keeping the male population up at these schools because parents are obsessive about their boys having boy friends: read the 100s of posts here about their DS “fitting in” at any college that isn’t 50% male.

This happens in k-8s, even. My child’s prek-8 couldn’t care less if there weren’t enough girls in a class. But if there was murmuring from parents about a cohort having “not enough boys” (which really meant sporty, cool boys- the elementary equivalent of colleges wanting plenty of basic male heterosexuals), the school would bend over backwards trying to address those concerns and admit more boys in entry years and retain boys in normal years.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I actually don't see it with kids for the top schools because they are all 50/50. Even MIT is 50/50.

I see it more at the tiers of 20+...places like Tulane that are 63% female and even many of the flagships that tend to have far more females applying and attending.

They are 50/50 because they accept more male applicants, there are less of them.

Here are some samples from the most recent CDS:

Princeton: 20,100 F applying / 19,500 M applying
Brown: 31,650 F applying / 19,666 m applying
Cornell: 34,172 F / 33,674 M
Dartmouth: 15,325 F / 13,516 M
Harvard: 30,363 F / 26,301 M
MIT: 8,939 F / 16,568 M
Stanford: 26,600 F / 27,133 M
Penn: 32,137 F / 27,128 M

So, seems like a definite advantage for men at Brown and definite advantage at MIT for women. Slight advantage for men at Harvard and Penn

This assumes that the average male and female applicant is approximately equal in qualifications. If female applicants are stronger on average (as evidence suggests they are), the shares by gender don't fully reflect the disparity.

T20 is top 2% of college students. I'm not sure there are more girls in that 2%, especially in STEM. Maybe by GPA. But at our school it's mostly boys winning the EC math and hacking competitions. Same thing with the competitive robotics team. There are many girls on the team, including "leadership positions", but the "hotshot" programmers who write the winning code are mostly boys.

At our high school the most talented person on the robotics team is a female student (won Top 10 award at Worlds last year). Mentorship and group dynamics are critical. I just judged a First Lego League competition and there were many mixed gender teams (4th-5th grade). Some teams are balanced. But there definitely are teams where the little boys do not shut up and try to hog all the airtime during the judging process. Not true of the girl spokespeople I saw.

My son has recruited two female friends onto the high school team and one is already well ahead of him because she's ultra intense. There is not an even split of gender on this team but it seems to be free of sexism that impacts learning and performance.

I was just pushing back on the assumption a poster made that there are more strong girls in the top 2%. That's a big assumption and I have seen some evidence that doesn't match that. I'm not making any big claims, just being skeptical of others making big claims.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wonder if it varies by high school.

Our high school admitted 20 women and 5 men to Michigan (in-state).

I was freaked out by this until I realized this was similar to the gender breakdowns of the summa cum laudes and NHS. So women are overperforming at our high school, and they just take the top of the class. Other schools might have a different split.

Would you have been freaked out if it was 2 men and 5 women?

Not really. For many reasons. But primarily because 7 is a very small sample of a population of 330-ish students compared to 25. You'd expect widely varying splits with no explanation from such a small sample. Also 2 of 7 is closer to an even gender split and the actual U of M gender split than 5 of 25. 25 is actually a lot of individual decisions when doing holistic admissions.

Mainly I was shocked that boys have such bad grades at my high school that summa cum laude was 75% girls. It's definitely not because they are taking harder classes than girls and getting worse grades. The top kids have a limited choice of weighted classes and are all in roughly the same things. So the boys are either underperforming in the same classes or not taking as many weighted classes.

Our school district visibly lacks high math SAT performers and science nerds of either gender so from the outside we don't have that kind of kid which is a population that skews male. Those parents and kids are known to be in the next school district over.

So on balance, our district seems to have this reported trend of females outperforming males and is contributing to the slight gender skew at U of M.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m hearing the same thing at co-ed HSs near me, which is a bit wild because we also saw it with HS admissions coming out of our private, co-Ed k-8. DD is at a girls’ school so at least we don’t have to experience it personally this time.

You will experience it when your daughter applies to college. My child is at an all-girls high school and results so far are not great and are lagging behind co-ed peer schools. It's still early but our college advisors are telling parents that it is just very hard to get in as a girl. Also, it is very difficult for a private to get an entire cohort of high achieving girls into competitive colleges. This is just what we are hearing. I don't know how things will turn out.

Sorry, I didn’t explain myself well. I know that overall there may still be a gender imbalance in terms of ease of admissions, but at least DD won’t be comparing her results and competing against classmates who she knows to have lesser extracurriculars, scores and grades. In other words, it will still exist but on the outside and so hopefully it will feel a lot less personal.

Her 8th grade spring was pretty sucky because girls saw boys with middling activities, grades, and known low test scores easily land spots while girl classmates who were true all-stars and equally good “fits” got rejected. It caused a lot of friction between girl vs. boy parents, too.

I understand that the feedback our HOS received from schools has prompted admissions workshops with current 6th, 7th and 8th grade parents to include a reality check about different admissions standards and patterns for girls vs. boys. It would be healthy if high schools started having the same discussion if they aren’t already.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I actually don't see it with kids for the top schools because they are all 50/50. Even MIT is 50/50.

I see it more at the tiers of 20+...places like Tulane that are 63% female and even many of the flagships that tend to have far more females applying and attending.

They are 50/50 because they accept more male applicants, there are less of them.

Here are some samples from the most recent CDS:

Princeton: 20,100 F applying / 19,500 M applying
Brown: 31,650 F applying / 19,666 m applying
Cornell: 34,172 F / 33,674 M
Dartmouth: 15,325 F / 13,516 M
Harvard: 30,363 F / 26,301 M
MIT: 8,939 F / 16,568 M
Stanford: 26,600 F / 27,133 M
Penn: 32,137 F / 27,128 M

So, seems like a definite advantage for men at Brown and definite advantage at MIT for women. Slight advantage for men at Harvard and Penn

This assumes that the average male and female applicant is approximately equal in qualifications. If female applicants are stronger on average (as evidence suggests they are), the shares by gender don't fully reflect the disparity.

T20 is top 2% of college students. I'm not sure there are more girls in that 2%, especially in STEM. Maybe by GPA. But at our school it's mostly boys winning the EC math and hacking competitions. Same thing with the competitive robotics team. There are many girls on the team, including "leadership positions", but the "hotshot" programmers who write the winning code are mostly boys.

At our high school the most talented person on the robotics team is a female student (won Top 10 award at Worlds last year). Mentorship and group dynamics are critical. I just judged a First Lego League competition and there were many mixed gender teams (4th-5th grade). Some teams are balanced. But there definitely are teams where the little boys do not shut up and try to hog all the airtime during the judging process. Not true of the girl spokespeople I saw.

My son has recruited two female friends onto the high school team and one is already well ahead of him because she's ultra intense. There is not an even split of gender on this team but it seems to be free of sexism that impacts learning and performance.