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Your comment is self-contradicting: If there's a "giant" gap between boys who start young and girls or boys who don't, then acknowledging that gap at the applic

Your comment is self-contradicting: If there's a "giant" gap between boys who start young and girls or boys who don't, then acknowledging that gap at the application stage is not preferential treatment. Ignoring it because it doesn't favour girls, on the other hand, is preferential treatment. Edited to add: The time to intervene, if it to be equitable, is around the age of 12. But getting the interest of 12 year olds who wouldn't otherwise participate is a more difficult task than changing admission criteria at colleges.

gamegoblin 13y ago
Where is the contradiction? I was pointing out essentially what your edit suggests. Somehow we've made a society in which young boys favor programming more than girls. I wasn't saying that people who have been programming since age 12 should be on equal footing in terms of the admissions process. As I said in some comments below, I think that the non-preferential treatment is instead geared towards people who have dabbled in programming a bit (AP Computer Science or a similar course in highschool). So at face value, the person who has 1 year experience in Java will appear to be a better fit for the program than someone with no experience, but by graduation time, there will probably be no correlation between those who came in with 1 year experience and those without any. Someone who has been programming as a hobby since age 12 will probably be highly correlated with success by graduation time. I don't think CMU is disputing that. Rather, they are disputing the first case of someone with some experience vs. someone with no experience. So I think there was just a misunderstanding when you read my comment, since I was pretty much saying (longer-windedly) what you did in your edit.
- camelite 13y ago
  > Where is the contradiction? You referenced, approvingly I assume, emphasizing "potential" over skill in admissions. You'd like for it not to unfairly impact boys who've had a genuine interest since a young age. Unfortunately CMU's policy seems to be to disregard all levels of prior experience. They contrast the newer polices with the old, which gave preference to "lots of previous programming experience". (not just a little bit) They target aptitude and "non-academic strengths". (a lot or a little previous experience doesn't fit here). Finally, if you are actually giving weight to experience, explicitly stating "no prior experience required" is a funny way to go about it. One last thing: a corollary of my edit is that an intervention that changes requirements however they need to be changed, just to get more girls in the door, is inequitable.

gamegoblin 13y ago

Where is the contradiction? I was pointing out essentially what your edit suggests. Somehow we've made a society in which young boys favor programming more than girls. I wasn't saying that people who have been programming since age 12 should be on equal footing in terms of the admissions process. As I said in some comments below, I think that the non-preferential treatment is instead geared towards people who have dabbled in programming a bit (AP Computer Science or a similar course in highschool). So at face value, the person who has 1 year experience in Java will appear to be a better fit for the program than someone with no experience, but by graduation time, there will probably be no correlation between those who came in with 1 year experience and those without any. Someone who has been programming as a hobby since age 12 will probably be highly correlated with success by graduation time. I don't think CMU is disputing that. Rather, they are disputing the first case of someone with some experience vs. someone with no experience. So I think there was just a misunderstanding when you read my comment, since I was pretty much saying (longer-windedly) what you did in your edit.

camelite 13y ago
> Where is the contradiction? You referenced, approvingly I assume, emphasizing "potential" over skill in admissions. You'd like for it not to unfairly impact boys who've had a genuine interest since a young age. Unfortunately CMU's policy seems to be to disregard all levels of prior experience. They contrast the newer polices with the old, which gave preference to "lots of previous programming experience". (not just a little bit) They target aptitude and "non-academic strengths". (a lot or a little previous experience doesn't fit here). Finally, if you are actually giving weight to experience, explicitly stating "no prior experience required" is a funny way to go about it. One last thing: a corollary of my edit is that an intervention that changes requirements however they need to be changed, just to get more girls in the door, is inequitable.