The College Admissions Gender Gap

Whenever I get together with a group of my girlfriends, the conversation usually focuses on one subject: men. After running down our history of bad first dates, failed relationships, and men that just didn’t make the cut at all, we usually resign ourselves to one common phrase, “A good man is hard to find.” It appears that it is not just my friends and I having issues with finding male applicants. College admission boards are also experiencing the same difficulty.

An article released in June from U.S. News & World Report stated, “Many colleges are rejecting women at rates drastically higher than those for men.” More and more young female college bound seniors are getting their hopes dashed when they receive thin envelopes filled with rejection letters rather than thick envelopes signaling acceptance to the colleges or universities of their choice.

These young women are the cream of the crop. They have taken accelerated courses in high school and received good grades. They have participated in myriad extra curricular activities. Some even go the extra mile by dedicating several hours to community service pushing their already hectic schedules to max capacity. Clearly, these young women are the best and brightest the nation has to offer. So what is the problem? The answer is the 60/40 ratio.

Alex Kingsbury, author of the U.S. News & World Report article, states, “From rough parity in 1980, women made up 57 percent of the 16.6 million American college goers in 2006. By 2010 the Department of Education expects the ratio to be around 60 to 40.” These statistics force college admission boards to engage in a high stakes game of the 60/40 ratio. Once a college campus achieves an undergraduate percentage of 60 in favor of females, women become less desirable applicants.

The sting of rejection is felt most at small liberal arts colleges versus Ivy League universities such as Duke or Harvard. The most elite colleges have always been known for cherry picking the best of the best out of the high achiever pool which allows them to keep a steady gender balance. Unfortunately for the colleges just below them on the totem pole, the 60/40 ratio becomes a major factor in their decision-making process when it comes to accepting or rejecting applicants. Their reasons for defending the stacking of the gender deck in favor of men include athletic and development criteria, thereby allowing men to be judged at a lower standard.

Some smaller colleges feel it is best to create an environment where the campus is an equal reflection of bright men and women instead of possibly accepting the most qualified. In Kingsbury’s article, Henry Broaddus, director of admission at the College of William and Mary, is quoted saying, “Even women who enroll…expect to see men on campus. It’s not the College of Mary and Mary; it’s the College of William and Mary.”

A not so strange fact is that a college becomes less attractive to women once finding out the college has a larger number of female students than males. After all, one doesn’t go to college just to study. True, the prospects are pretty slim at colleges with a larger female student population when it comes to potential candidates to ask to the winter or spring dance. A question such as “where are all the guys” could pop into mind; however, that is not the question that should be asked. The question is, why does it seem that more women are going to college?

The answer, simply put, is that females study more and gets better grades. And why shouldn’t we, since the women’s liberation movement have been told us we can be whatever it is we want to be? Gloria Steinem must be boggled from the butterfly effect that caused college admission boards to impose stiffer standards on young women for believing what she championed.

In our parents’ day getting accepted to college was merely just a matter of filling out the application. The academic, extracurricular and social bar has now been raised so high that students must jump with the zeal of an Olympian in order to be accepted. Maybe James Brown was right: it is a man’s world, but even he knew that it would be nothing without a woman. The saddest fact that comes from the 60/40 ratio is that it penalizes young women for being overachievers, and could possibly send the message to young men that they do not have to work as hard to be accepted because their gender almost guarantees them an acceptance letter to the school of their choice.

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