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

#81

Post by b112 » Tue, Aug 27, 2024, 4:43 PM UTC

g15jv2dp wrote: post #69

b112 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, the parent didn't say their personal dating pool, did they? They spoke generically. They also didn't say men would even ask anyone out, are you being sexist, and assuming men always ask, and women do not? And unless 20 year olds have changed dramatically, everyone is looking for new dating pools. Or are you suggesting women don't have a sex drive, and should be chaste?

> They also didn't say men would even ask anyone out, are you being sexist, and assuming men always ask, and women do not? Not remotely related to what I said. > Or are you suggesting women don't have a sex drive, and should be chaste? Not remotely related to what I said. Why do you feel the need to make stuff up?

I'm responding to your direct personal attack on the parent, demonstrating what such assumptions look like.

And for your initial assumption to be true, men would have to be doing the asking. Otherwise, why white knight to save the poor women? Yet if women did the asking, there's no downside for them, yes?

Your post was wrong.

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

#82

Post by onetimeusename » Tue, Aug 27, 2024, 4:43 PM UTC

pseudosavant wrote: post #50

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…

It is funny how you take as a default fact that the male students (and even rejected applicants) are smarter and more talented than female students without a single shred of data.

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 mentions that men are not better at math than women are and talks about a long quest for gender parity but doesn't seem concerned at all when men are accepted less than women so I am curious how that is consistent.

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/u8ok2w/oc_...

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

#83

Post by FormerBandmate » Tue, Aug 27, 2024, 4:44 PM UTC

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…

Actually it’s the opposite, it’s harder for women to get into college. 4.5 vs 1.9% for Caltech lmao

https://www.clarkecollegeinsight.com/blog/how-to-get-into-ca....

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

#84

Post by Jtsummers » Tue, Aug 27, 2024, 4:44 PM UTC

yergi wrote: post #43

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…

It's very VERY bad for women if you REALLY think about it from a perspective where life and death are on the line. Think about it: You need brain surgery to remove a tumor. You have a slim chance of surviving the procedure. Maybe your doctor is there in that position ONLY because they are the best. But, MAYBE they are only there based purely upon some non-skill based factor as well. Do you take that chance? No. You d…

You don't have to SHOUT so much like an angry uncle sending rants via their still active AOL account. From the guidelines:

> Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put *asterisks* around it and it will get italicized.

asterisk is italicized when surrounded by single asterisks on either side, and if you want your asterisks back use \* or **.

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

#85

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 27, 2024, 4:45 PM UTC

isotypic wrote: post #80

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 can guarantee you that way more men applied to Caltech than women did Actually, my understanding was that women typically apply to higher education at higher rates than men. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2004.09.008 has some data supporting this, but it is an older paper - has this changed in recent years, or is it different for Caltech specifically? > This also means that on average, a man on campus is…

[deleted]

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

#86

Post by snarf21 » Tue, Aug 27, 2024, 4:46 PM UTC

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 think you are missing the point that this is the way you get equal numbers of men and women applying. Mechanical engineering is currently 90/10 in the US. It takes extraordinary measures to create change and change is a pendulum. You can't ride the break to make it not go past equilibrium, you have to push it further past so that it will eventually move in the direction you want. If you want more women applying, give them role models that are engineers. Make them aware of the profession their whole life, not at an 11th grade career fair.

This kind of perspective strikes me as "not fair". What percentage of qualified candidates don't get into Harvard because rich legacies get in? Are you just as outraged at that? I also seen no proof that the women admitted are incapable of the work. At these top schools, lots of highly qualified students don't get in for random reasons and test scores and grades are not a great predictor of career success. As in most things, you get what you optimize for and Caltech is optimizing for more women graduates.

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

#87

Post by FormerBandmate » Tue, Aug 27, 2024, 4:46 PM UTC

isotypic wrote: post #80

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 can guarantee you that way more men applied to Caltech than women did Actually, my understanding was that women typically apply to higher education at higher rates than men. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2004.09.008 has some data supporting this, but it is an older paper - has this changed in recent years, or is it different for Caltech specifically? > This also means that on average, a man on campus is…

It seems like there is actually some affirmative action for men going on at Caltech, the exact opposite of what he claimed. Check out the acceptance rates, it’s double for men

https://www.clarkecollegeinsight.com/blog/how-to-get-into-ca...

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

#88

Post by HideousKojima » Tue, Aug 27, 2024, 4:46 PM UTC

FormerBandmate wrote: post #76

FredPret wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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

#89

Post by FormerBandmate » Tue, Aug 27, 2024, 4:47 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #23

Some of it is probably a matter of deliberate policy choices. Other aspects include an organic shift away from engineering disciplines (like mechanical engineering) that were historically very heavily male dominated. I don't know the exact current ratio at MIT without looking up (pretty close to equal) but it was something like 1:7 50 years ago even though women were admitted since I think its founding.

Also there are way more women applying, to the point where you’re more than double as likely to get in as a man than as a woman. There’s a huge argument about this but no one actually looked up the data for some reason: https://www.clarkecollegeinsight.com/blog/how-to-get-into-ca...

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

#90

Post by lukas099 » Tue, Aug 27, 2024, 4:49 PM UTC

HideousKojima wrote: post #36

lotsofpulp wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this premise: > I can guarantee you that way more men applied to Caltech than women did. lead to this conclusion: >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.

Unless the pool of females applying was significantly more qualified than the males, it is almost certainly true. Just a matter of statistics.

I think it's feasible that the females were significantly more qualified than the males. The fact that going to Caltech is seemingly against the gender norm for women may actually cause them to self-select for only the most qualified and dedicated to STEM to apply. Whereas a lot more men may have applied 'just because'.

Also, women are just doing better in school right now. The average female college applicant is better than the average male college applicant. So it's not hard to imagine this it true for CalTech too.