Re:Seeking gender balance, selective schools giving men a le...
by tzs on Monday August 07, 2023 @02:35PM
(#37038647)
That's one way to affect the gender ratio of your student body.
There's also a way to do it that doesn't involve giving one gender a boost in admission. Instead (1) try to get more people of the desired gender who are qualified to make it without a boost to apply, and (2) try to get more people of the desired gender that are accepted by multiple schools to decide to go to yours.
That's the approach Caltech took. When I was there in the '80s it was 85% male (it is 54% male nowadays). That was annoying and distracting for everybody. They made it a priority to get more balanced, and the approach was to work on the pipeline.
When I, a pretty average for Caltech male, was offered admission they sent me a letter and told me the deadline to accept and how to do so, and that was pretty much it. If I had picked another school Caltech wouldn't have tried to get me to change my mind. It would have just been "tzs didn't accept...offer that spot to the next kid on the waitlist".
If I had been a female, they probably would have sent a faculty member to visit me and my parents at home and try to convince us that Caltech was the place to be.
Same on the pre-application side of things. They'd send people out to meet top female high school STEM students and try and convince them to apply. For males you had to be really special to get that kind of recruitment.
There's also a way to do it that doesn't involve giving one gender a boost in admission. Instead (1) try to get more people of the desired gender who are qualified to make it without a boost to apply, and (2) try to get more people of the desired gender that are accepted by multiple schools to decide to go to yours.
That's the approach Caltech took. When I was there in the '80s it was 85% male (it is 54% male nowadays). That was annoying and distracting for everybody. They made it a priority to get more balanced, and the approach was to work on the pipeline.
When I, a pretty average for Caltech male, was offered admission they sent me a letter and told me the deadline to accept and how to do so, and that was pretty much it. If I had picked another school Caltech wouldn't have tried to get me to change my mind. It would have just been "tzs didn't accept...offer that spot to the next kid on the waitlist".
If I had been a female, they probably would have sent a faculty member to visit me and my parents at home and try to convince us that Caltech was the place to be.
Same on the pre-application side of things. They'd send people out to meet top female high school STEM students and try and convince them to apply. For males you had to be really special to get that kind of recruitment.