Caltech, long a bastion of male students, enrolls first class of majority women • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by blacksmythe » Fri, Aug 30, 2024, 1:50 AM UTC

tzs wrote: post #160

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…

I believe you've overlooked some important factors. First, Caltech puts a lot more effort into recruiting top women than into recruiting top men. So if you are a top man but are not considering applying to Caltech Caltech probably won't reach out to try to change your mind. If you are a top women they are much more likely to reach out to you, maybe even sending someone to visit and personally pitch applying to Caltec…

Caltech - where your best just isn't good enough.

  https://www.flickr.com/photos/pixieza/79223350

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

#182

Post by navvyeanand » Fri, Aug 30, 2024, 3:56 AM UTC

thedman9052 wrote: post #105

disentanglement wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coming from a country where the sort of super selective universities like Caltech don't exist, the fierce debates about equality of admissions to these sort of places never made sense to me. If Caltech, Harvard, MIT or wherever really were committed about advancing gender inequality, why not just raise the numbers of students and admit more people? The number of students is mainly limited artificially and there's no…

The prestige of these schools is a significant, if not the main part of their appeal. Admitting too many students would cheapen their name. It's an open secret that the admissions processes for the elite US schools is far from meritocratic. They do admit many top performers, since it's part of their image, but also prioritize children of the wealthy and powerful, children of alumni, and other prospects with traits go…

I don't know where you're getting your data from, you're probably referring to the Harvard lawsuit.

Caltech in particular is race-blind, and the majority of people attending Caltech are Asian.

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

#183

Post by navvyeanand » Fri, Aug 30, 2024, 4:00 AM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #115

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…

> If that holds for Caltech applicants, which is reasonable to assume Caltech is an outlier if there ever was one, so why would it be reasonable to assume Caltech’s applicant statistics reflect broad population SAT statistics?

Precisely. I think almost everyone who applies has a 1500+ SAT score and ~3.8-4.0 GPA