Numbers: ~20% of undergrad CS majors are women. 23/51 hacker school students are women. Assuming that people applied in proportions roughly equal to the undergraduate degree ratio (a large assumption, I am sure), that means that 4 times the men are applying to only 1.2x more slots - that is, the average woman has ~3.3x better chance to get into the school than the average male. Why is it that balanced gender is worth (apparently) far more than the other qualities? Why is it that even with the large admission boost you offer financial aid - surely the former would be enough to attract enough women (or things are worse than I thought!)

Note that all of this is just curiosity. I'm happy to see such proactive courting of women in CS, but I've never seen anyone else push so hard for it without being explicitly for the advancement of women in CS.

EDIT: reading the site, one segment sticks out at me as seemingly answering my question:

>We're not going to lower the bar for female applicants. It frustrates us a little that we feel the need to say that, and we think it underlines the sexism (intentional and not) that so pervades the programming world.

It's simple statistics that implies this, not sexism. Consider the following assumptions:

A) There are fewer women programmers than male programmers in the world. B) Women programmers and male programmers have an equal skill distribution. C) People apply to the program in ratios reflecting the "real world".

Therefore, the enrollment should also reflect the real world. Clearly, this is false, so one of my assumptions is false - C is the suspect one.

Anyway, I'm extremely happy with what you're doing. Keep up the good work.