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Here are Harvey Mudd's acceptance rates by gender: Men 14.4% Women 38% Source: http://www.parchment.com/c/college/college-545-harvey-mudd-college.html http:/
by Luit2 13y ago
Here are Harvey Mudd's acceptance rates by gender:
Men 14.4%
Women 38%
Source: http://www.parchment.com/c/college/college-545-harvey-mudd-college.html http://www.parchment.com/c/college/college-545-harvey-mudd-c...
I am perpetually bamboozled how anyone can think anecdotes like this matter. If Harvard wanted too I am sure they could make half their undergraduate population disabled black lesbians. That does not prove that your average state school is horrible and discriminatory just because that is not their class composition.
Elite schools get more applicants of either gender than they have room for and those applicants are of very high quality with very high levels of interest in the subject matter.
- arjie 13y agoWell, the higher female acceptance rate may be because only good female students do CS. If you have a hostile environment, only the most motivated will succeed. It's like a sieve. You are applying selective pressure against a certain group of people succeeding. Expect to get only the most motivated. Not saying this is the case in reality, but I think the conclusion that they're indiscriminately accepting women is facile.
- codexon 13y agoCitation needed. It is much more plausible that these engineering colleges have laxer requirements for females in order to get a 50/50 gender balance rather than public school discrimination.
- arthulia 13y agoCitation needed. Anecdotal rebuttal: I know a bunch of female students at Harvey Mudd and that doesn't appear to be the case.
- codexon 13y agoIt doesn't need a citation, it is supported by Occam's razor while you are suggesting a complex explanation. How does Harvey Mudd magically close their gender gap as though they suddenly decided to stop discriminating against females all these years? If the girls you knew were, say 10% less capable compared to male applicants, would you be able to tell? I doubt it.
- arthulia 13y ago> If the girls you knew were, say 10% less capable compared to male applicants, would you be able to tell? I doubt it. If you can't tell then what difference does it make?
- codexon 13y agoIt makes a difference to the male applicants that would've been accepted if there wasn't a bias.
- davorak 13y agoA program erasing the current cultural bias/momentum against females will make a difference to all the females who will not have to face said momentum/bias.
- codexon 13y agoBut how do you know that a 50/50 balance is even natural in engineering fields like CS? Why isn't there a 50/50 balance and other similar initiatives for males for female dominated subjects like nursing and education?
- davorak 13y agoIs there solid evidence of an IQ difference between the genders or a general subject, with a biological understanding of why such a difference exists? I currently have not come across any such solid evidence and biological understanding. Seems unproductive to operate under an understanding far from 50/50 when I do not have solid evidence that I should be.
- codexon 13y agoI never brought up the argument that males are smarter than females. Why wouldn't you consider the possibility that most females don't want to sit in front of a screen all day with minimal social interaction often working 70 hour weeks? Is it because you feel that the field of CS is so superior that no one could dislike it?
- coryrc 13y agoPlease use "women" instead of "girls", unless you are talking about children under ~11.
- Tichy 13y agoHow would the students know that they had laxer requirements?
- RyanZAG 13y agoClose to triple through natural occurrence? Come now, you're the one being facile.
- joe_the_user 13y agoThe point is the acceptance rate by itself is too murky a statistic to prove the gp's point.
- cousin_it 13y agoNote that if acceptance rate is a murky statistic, then using underrepresentation to prove discrimination might be even murkier, because underrepresentation is a function of the acceptance rate and the number of applicants.
- davorak 13y ago> Note that if acceptance rate is a murky statistic, then using underrepresentation to prove discrimination might be even murkier, If it was an isolated incident then yes. The gender difference in engineering/science and in this case CS is fairly broad and it seems unlikely that it does not point to something significant, cultural momentum and bias being a popular choice.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- joe_the_user 13y agoSo what? Under-representation is not used primary to prove discrimination, Under-representation is simply an undesirable state of affairs to many people. Some of the remedies for this involve correcting apparent discrimination, some involve encouraging girls to get involved with CS and some involve making CS more appealing to everyone (with the hope this will include a lot of girls). The focus or, uh, fixation of a certain breed of poster on "this doesn't prove discrimination, you can't prove I'm a sexist, no way..." seems telling to me but of course what seems clear to an Internet poster isn't evidence sufficient for policy.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- drblast 13y agoDoing the math it looks like there were about 873 female applicants and 2271 male applicants. It's certainly possible that a higher percentage of the much smaller female group were qualified than the larger male group. In this case, where the assumption is that high school females are less likely to want to pursue a math/sci/tech degree, I'd guess it's likely that the average female applicant to Harvey Mudd is more qualified than the average male, simply because she's already going against the grain by applying. But none of that has anything to do with the extremely positive aspect of making the compSci program more fun and accessible to all comers by ditching Java and C++ in the intro classes and focusing on solving real world problems. Bravo to that.
- omonra 13y agoGreat point. So the next question is - for how many years will they admit less qualified women before the policy can be rescinded? Or will it stay in place as long as its required to have a 50-50 incoming class - which basically means quotas forever?
- davorak 13y agoThose statistics are for the entire University. The statistic they gave was 48 percent female in the junior CS class. Most Universities seem to have problems with females transferring out in the first two years. So it does not seem the initial acceptance criterion should weigh agains the accomplishment.