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Comment by thaumasiotes | Hacker News Reader

> Male students face structural barriers when it comes to college acceptance, to the point where a woman is ~50% more likely to get a college admission.

As far as college acceptance itself, the norm is for colleges to apply a lower admission standard for boys than they do for girls.

The structural issues are elsewhere, such as the emphasis on GPA and the related emphasis on grading for effort without caring whether the student knows the material.

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>the norm is for colleges to apply a lower admission standard for boys than they do for girls.

Where are you getting this from? The data and all incentives going female>either>male would suggest otherwise, if it would suggest anything at all.

It's well known. Colleges will admit to it in public, often saying things like "we need to have a lower standard for boys, or else no girls will want to attend our school". (The ideas being that (1) the goal of running a college is to admit more girls; and (2) girls don't want to attend all-girl schools, so you can get higher overall female admissions by admitting some unqualified boys.)

If you think the data suggest that colleges are overall giving admissions preferences to females in favor of males, you haven't looked at the data.

If this is public, surely you have some actual sources to verify this?

>girls don't want to attend all-girl schools, so you can get higher overall female admissions by admitting some unqualified boys

This implies either unqualified boys are better attractors, or there not being enough qualified boys. I doubt either of those being true given tournament selection being omnipresent.

>you haven't looked at the data

The data most available shows admission rates to be fairly equal, with far more scholarships for girls in areas they lack presence than the other way around. The data on standards is practically invisible, and I'd be very skeptical of colleges publically admitting to sexism in today's age, let alone sexism in favor of boys. Openly doing so and not trying to change this is asking for a massive boycott.

>>you haven't looked at the data

> The data most available shows admission rates to be fairly equal, with far more scholarships for girls in areas they lack presence than the other way around. The data on standards is practically invisible

So you're saying... you haven't looked at the data, and that's why you're comfortable interpreting what it says.

Solid intellectual effort there.

> If this is public, surely you have some actual sources to verify this?

Indeed! You can find them yourself too, just look for any coverage of the issue over the last 20 years. I can't be responsible for everyone who wants to contradict stuff that's been known for decades. Get your own house in order.

I'm not the person you are arguing with. I'm only dropping in to say it's extremely frustrating seeing you claim data this, data that, without ever providing that data. The crux of the issue you are debating is the data you claim to have. Please either provide it or stop going in circles.

I am yet to see a single university admit to biasing males in admission. Most of them admit to biasing by race, so it shouldn't be hard to find an example.

Schools that deliberately don't go out of their way to select for gender parity wind up with far more girls than boys. UNC Chapel Hill, for example, is 60% female. From what I understand, this does interesting things to their social dynamics.

Highly selective colleges that strive for parity must accomplish that by rejecting a few girls who would have gotten in on merit alone, and admitting a few boys who should have been the first ones out.

What incentives are you thinking of? What's the source of your data?

Please cite a source for gender discrimination in admissions. Seems like this would be a textbook Title IX violation.

Look at the incoming class numbers. Harvard/MIT/Princeton/Yale are all within 2% of 50/50.

I don't know how they do it legally, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Ah, that makes sense. Since those are private schools they don't need to comply with Title IX.

Title IX applies to schools that accept federal funding such as Harvard, MIT etc. see for example https://studentlife.mit.edu/titleix

I wasn't aware they accepted funding. So it seems odd they are so evenly balanced.

Another possibility: men have higher variation in performance than women. Even if the male mean were lower, a greater standard deviation would swamp that effect at the high end.

> I wasn't aware they accepted funding.

Their researchers apply for grants. That is considered "funding". Enrolling students who have taken out student loans is also considered to be "goverment funding" for the school rather than the student.

"Enrolling students who have taken out student loans is also considered to be "goverment funding" for the school rather than the student."

Do you have a source for this?

Title IX specifically does not apply to undergraduate admissions at private universities.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/20/1681

> in regard to admissions to educational institutions, this section shall apply only to institutions of vocational education, professional education, and graduate higher education, and to public institutions of undergraduate higher education

Ah, so even though the rest of title IX applies, admissions does not.

It's more nuanced than that. Engineering schools have mugh higher admission rates for women, sometimes over 2x, in the case of MIT: https://www.collegetransitions.com/blog/can-your-gender-give....

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