It sounds like the only thing they did with admissions was to not look at previous programming experience as a major factor.

I was admitted to a Chemical Engineering college program, despite the fact that I had no previous high school experience in fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, and the rest. No one thought that was strange.

Why is CS so different that you have to be a hot-shot programmer before you enter?

CMU is a top tier school. Why should you deny a hot-shot programmer admission for someone who has a passing fancy? Judging "potential" instead of a candidate's past work and experience reeks of affirmative action.

They aren't giving them negative weight, they are just looking forward.

I know plenty of guys who went into uni with a bit of java experience (AP CS in highschool or something similar). So yeah, they know your basic control flow and OOP. But when it comes to how they will perform in N years, it means nothing. Any intelligent student without experience could (and did!) surpass the "more experienced" programmers by graduation time.

If someone is the next programming wiz of that year, I'm sure they will be viewed as having plenty of potential and get in.

If someone has a year or two of bad Java, they aren't viewing that as any better than someone with a good quantitative background. That's not affirmative action, it's foresight.

Anecdotes, not data, but I know plenty of people who learned Java, C#, or JS in highschool, some even did internships, yet someone who hadn't coded before 2nd year uni soared past their skill level within a year because he was a generally smart guy with good math and logic skills.

So should the people with a bit of experience be assumed to have more potential? No. Should somehow who's been coding their whole life and it's their number 1 hobby be assumed to have more potential? Yes. Not because of their experience, but because of their passion.

CMU is a top tier school. Why would you expect hot-shot programming experience to be relevant to their computer science program?

You are totally using the candidate's past work and experience to judge them. I'm sure those that get in have outstanding AP tests in math and science, great test scores, etc. A hot-short programmer would have that experience counted as well. The point is that programming is not the only type of experience they looked at. That's the same as it is for most other technical degrees (like my ChE).

And there isn't any preference based on gender, so this is nothing like affirmative action. It is just saying that bright technical people can learn programming, and don't need to come in as an expert.

Also, computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes [1].

[1] http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Computer_science

This. When you do something in the name of political correctness (and a completely economically (and risk free) biased one - i.e. almost nobody cares about the lack of female truck drivers) you still have to measure what are you inflicting damage upon.

- Is rejecting someone more fitted for this career path something good?

- Are you assuming everything is a societal result and there are no biological differences between the female/male psyche that makes them look for different hobbies and careers?

- It is know that women care more about socializing than men, and sitting in front of a screen for countless hours is pretty much the opposite of that; even when you work in a team, meetings are usually not something you look up to.

But we're not going to be able to measure those things until we try it and find out.

Also, many computer projects are done socially and aimed at socializing. Isolation is an old stereotype.

Not all women are extroverts? I'm a woman and could go without seeing people for a very long time. I think this is a huge misunderstanding of what it means to have a preference for the "social." It's about the purpose behind the project, not face time.

CS, much like art and music, is something that any sufficiently motivated individual will start doing far before they turn 18. (They differ from chemeng in this manner.) Both CMU art and CMU music require a portfolio review or audition.

http://admission.enrollment.cmu.edu/pages/art-required-portf...

http://www.music.cmu.edu/pages/audition-portfolio-review

Art and music are not unusual things to get into. But computer programming is often not presented as an option to anyone, especially women. So plenty of motivated and talented people might not even be introduced to it, or take it seriously.

Anyone with a Facebook account could have typed "learn to program" into Google rather than poking people in the farm while eating candy (or whatever people do on facebook these days).

If a person chose not to take programming seriously, that's on them.

So, women who get into CMU but disproportionately haven't been exposed to programming are in that situation because they were too busy playing Farmville?

I have no idea what they were doing - the point is that a Facebook account indicates the opportunity to use the internet. There has literally never been more information/tools available to potential programmers than there is today - free online coding schools, tutorials, stackoverflow, wikipedia, anything you want. Not to mention free compilers - when I was a kid, Borland C++ cost money.

I mention Facebook somewhat sarcastically because it's a service with no shortage of women. If women can be on Facebook, they can also be on Github if they choose to be.

There was never an easier time to learn programming, for free, while sitting at home, without even putting on pants, than today.

The secret of the patriarchy: http://bit.ly/w0iWlY

So what are people supposed to do, read up on every single topic on the internet? There was never an easier time to learn about alchemy, either.

The link goes to lmgtfy.com/?q=learn+programming

Where is the hot-shot requirement?

> In the past, admissions gave preference to people with lots of previous programming experience.

Right. Lots of exerience doesn't equal "hot shot" though.

Not lowering the bar, changing the metrics and possibly even raising the bar.

I had some conversations with a couple professors there before I graduated in the mid-1990s, they saw it as a two fold problem. The geek culture makes it hard for anyone not within it regardless of gender, second they saw that MIT, Stanford, and some other top schools had more alumni donations and also tended to have more technology startups and such closely related to the school which also sort of affected the school's income but also affected future placement of current students which has a pretty large impact on getting the best students in the future. The thought at the time was that the geek culture was just bad for the school, period, they produced a lot of talented engineers but maybe not a lot of really successful people in the bigger picture.

I don't remember the exact numbers but I want to say something like over 50% of the SCS students switch majors out of SCS or left CMU, maybe even more. I want to say 250 students were pre-SCS and something like 50 graduated, but 250 seems way too high though. I can also say that I was a mid-tier geek, I had some experience and some chops but there were dudes who had been paid programmers when they started as freshmen, it was at times intimidating. I do personally know a half dozen folks that changed majors because they decided they couldn't hack it before things really got difficult; good smart people. It can be a very intense pressure cooker, say 50% leave SCS, of the 50% that stay, maybe 90% have had a fair amount of experience and then the 10% that don't struggle with tools and just basic things before they can even do the work. Life's not always fair but that environment was definitely self shaping. I have no doubt in my mind that some of the ones that switched majors could have made it and were maybe a bit psyched out.

When I heard this, in a way I felt a sense of pride, I had finished the "Real CMU" before it got watered down. I also felt a bit of loss, like I had spent the time and money to get their name on my resume and they were going to water its value down. As I've matured, started a family, etc.. I've grown to believe that CMU had (maybe still has) a fairly unhealthy emotional culture about it, I learned a lot, and I really don't have a lot of bad things to say about the place but I meet a bunch of damaged people there and some that might not be damaged so much as just not healthy emotionally. I'm not a mental health expert though, it's just my feeling, there are also some great people I meet there too. I'm in far more contact with people not of SCS though. I've worked at a number of startups, including a couple that were very much on the brink of death and I don't know that I've ever encountered any professional stress close to some of the times at CMU.

Maybe you should read the article, then.