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Caltech, long a bastion of male students, enrolls first class of majority women

latimes.com

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Re: Caltech, long a bastion of male students, enrolls first class of majority women

#141

Post by ghaff »

mchannon wrote: post #134
foxyv wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That means the most talented and impressive young man who applied and didn’t get in is objectively more talented and impressive than the least talented and impressive (though still extremely talented and impressive) woman who applied and got in. This is almost a statistical certainty no matter how many women are admitted. Not because of any preferential treatment of women or men, but because the admissions process…

Disagree. In my argument I used “talented and impressive” to mean as the admissions group saw them. It’s subjective, it’s likely inaccurate, but it’s consistent with itself. Essentially the admissions group stack-ranked a male pile and a separate female pile and pulled the top 100 off each. Having to stack rank #100 from the thin pile and #101 from the thick pile would reverse their order using the organization’s sta…

As a guy, I just never had an interest in Caltech not because I probably saw it as more of a stretch than other schools I applied to and some of which I was admitted to. For one thing, it was in California which was probably more of a practical barrier from the East than it would be today.

But it's probably fair to say that the other schools you list (including MIT) are probably seen as more "normal" than Caltech is.

Re: Caltech, long a bastion of male students, enrolls first class of majority women

#142

Post by mchannon »

fckgw wrote: post #54
mchannon wrote: post #24

This is a third rail of conversation, regarding gender equality and equity, so please hold your downvotes if you differ from my positions. Some might value the perspective, and I feel we all could learn something here. I can guarantee you that way more men applied to Caltech than women did. That means the most talented and impressive young man who applied and didn’t get in is objectively more talented and impressive…

Your argument starts from the standpoint of "obviously women are inferior to men, so for there to be more women admitted than men it must reason that the scales were tipped in women's favor and good men are being left behind" You see how flawed that argument is, right?

In the event you're not just trolling (the downvotes seem to make it clear most people think that) and you actually believe what you wrote, I suggest you consider the possibility that I'm arguing something else entirely.

Re: Caltech, long a bastion of male students, enrolls first class of majority women

#143

Post by onetimeusename »

mchannon wrote: post #137
onetimeusename wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't know the specifics of the Caltech students unless they publish all the data. I am not aware of any school that does that or breaks down data by gender even. (I could be wrong). But here[1] there is a gender gap in SAT scores on average across all test takers, especially for mathematics. If that holds for Caltech applicants, which is reasonable to assume, then male students were more qualified. The article me…

They did publish all (or a sufficient subset of) the data, most schools do publish that and break it down by gender, and you’re wrong. I recognize the hurry to get a comment in, but an appeal to ignorance instead of googling it and using what you find to shape your opinion really sells yourself short, and diminishes the discussion to follow.

By data I meant, applicant data not enrollment data. I haven't seen schools publish admissions data broken down by gender. I can find the number of male and female applicants for a year but AFAIK they do not publish things like GPA and SAT or other performance measure of applicants broken down by gender. That's the only way to compare these two. I have googled for it and I don't see it. (https://www.google.com/search?q=caltech+SAT+by+gender)

AFAIK schools don't generally publish detailed statistics of applicants like that. They do publish enrolled student data. So is it possible that women outperformed men at Caltech? Yes. Is that more likely that what I implied? No, I think using the average SAT scores by gender, it's more likely men outperformed women at Caltech. But there is a degree of uncertainty.

Also I think you are making assumptions about what my motives were and why I posted. Guidelines:

Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

Re: Caltech, long a bastion of male students, enrolls first class of majority women

#144

Post by mchannon »

onlypassingthru wrote: post #101
mchannon wrote: post #24

This is a third rail of conversation, regarding gender equality and equity, so please hold your downvotes if you differ from my positions. Some might value the perspective, and I feel we all could learn something here. I can guarantee you that way more men applied to Caltech than women did. That means the most talented and impressive young man who applied and didn’t get in is objectively more talented and impressive…

> That means the most talented and impressive young man who applied and didn’t get in is objectively more talented and impressive than the least talented and impressive (though still extremely talented and impressive) woman who applied and got in. That is a hasty generalization fallacy. That presumes the applicant pools were comprised of the same quality of applicants. It could also be that there are simply more youn…

To the contrary, it presumes that the right edge of the curves for both applicant pools do _not_ connect at n - ~100. Given the size difference between cohorts, I argue the curves would never meet at all. If the sizes were identical or close, then you could argue I'm using the fallacy.

Your second guess is correct.

Re: Caltech, long a bastion of male students, enrolls first class of majority women

#145

Post by mchannon »

caddemon wrote: post #126
mchannon wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the option as an 18-yo male I’d probably opt for 5% male, but that’s strictly a matter of personal preference, and not a basis for admissions. I endured 75+% male and didn’t particularly enjoy it, but that’s not why I attended my similarly-sized engineering college. I went for the education and rigor. Caltech is and has always been about hardcore study. It’s not a cotillion. At least it didn’t used to be.

You don't need to sacrifice the rigor to have a more balanced community, at least not at the total size Caltech is. There's a large component of college admissions these days that is somewhat arbitrary. High school resumes (at least the type that applies to these schools) have become absolutely cracked. Like it used to mean something to have a research internship, now it's weird not to.

I think you do need to sacrifice some rigor to reach a level of perfect balance, or at least sacrifice the appearance of rigor. So let's agree to differ on that one.

I think we would agree about most aspects of college admissions being flawed.

Re: Caltech, long a bastion of male students, enrolls first class of majority women

#146

Post by ghaff »

HideousKojima wrote: post #88
FormerBandmate wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can just date down? A lot of the times those degrees don’t pay better anyway

At least according to surveys and other stats, women are far more reluctant to date down than men.

Then they adjust or don't date.

Re: Caltech, long a bastion of male students, enrolls first class of majority women

#147

Post by mchannon »

onetimeusename wrote: post #143
mchannon wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did publish all (or a sufficient subset of) the data, most schools do publish that and break it down by gender, and you’re wrong. I recognize the hurry to get a comment in, but an appeal to ignorance instead of googling it and using what you find to shape your opinion really sells yourself short, and diminishes the discussion to follow.

By data I meant, applicant data not enrollment data. I haven't seen schools publish admissions data broken down by gender. I can find the number of male and female applicants for a year but AFAIK they do not publish things like GPA and SAT or other performance measure of applicants broken down by gender. That's the only way to compare these two. I have googled for it and I don't see it. ( https://www.google.com/searc…

I submit you're looking for the wrong thing. We can assume every person at the top of both piles has a perfect GPA and a near-perfect SAT score, so this is not likely to help us figure anything out.

The real figure of merit in this discussion is simply the thickness of both piles.

With regard to the rest, I interpreted what you wrote differently than how you meant it, I appreciate the explanation, and I apologize for the confusion.

Re: Caltech, long a bastion of male students, enrolls first class of majority women

#148

Post by ghaff »

EasyMark wrote: post #140
riffic wrote: post #6

Caltech didn't even admit women until 1970.

That was a half century plus ago though? 50 years is a long long time.

And even some of the top tier engineering schools that have admitted women for an even longer time generally had a pretty minuscule number until relatively recently.

Re: Caltech, long a bastion of male students, enrolls first class of majority women

#149

Post by onetimeusename »

mchannon wrote: post #147
onetimeusename wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By data I meant, applicant data not enrollment data. I haven't seen schools publish admissions data broken down by gender. I can find the number of male and female applicants for a year but AFAIK they do not publish things like GPA and SAT or other performance measure of applicants broken down by gender. That's the only way to compare these two. I have googled for it and I don't see it. ( https://www.google.com/searc…

I submit you're looking for the wrong thing. We can assume every person at the top of both piles has a perfect GPA and a near-perfect SAT score, so this is not likely to help us figure anything out. The real figure of merit in this discussion is simply the thickness of both piles. With regard to the rest, I interpreted what you wrote differently than how you meant it, I appreciate the explanation, and I apologize for…

> We can assume every person at the top of both piles has a perfect GPA and a near-perfect SAT score

actually that's a very fair point and you're right. We do know how many are in each pile. thanks and sorry for the confusion.

Re: Caltech, long a bastion of male students, enrolls first class of majority women

#150

Post by vsuperpower2021 »

FredPret wrote: post #55
yeeetz wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

at least it makes dating easier for guys at schools like caltech now which is a non-trivial plus

It's nice for the guys to have it easy for a couple of years, but it's bad for all of us if an entire generation of women find it almost impossible to date because they want to date men with degrees and those don't exist in large enough numbers.

Men drop out of college; women most affected
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