Some admissions officials admit that male applicants get special treatment

[garbon]

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/court-prepares-affirmative-action-decision-softer-standards-men-182205509.html

The Supreme Court is poised to release its opinion on an affirmative-action case that could forever change the way public colleges and universities consider race in admissions. But even if, as some predict, the justices issue a broad ruling slapping down the use of race in admissions, an open secret in higher education—that many colleges lower their admissions standards for male applicants—remains unchallenged and largely unremarked upon.

For years, the percentage of men enrolled in college has been declining, with women making up nearly 57 percent of all undergrads at four-year colleges last year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. While schools are prohibited under the federal Title IX law from discriminating based on gender, some admissions officials have admitted in recent years that male applicants get a leg up from colleges hoping to avoid gender imbalances on campus.

Jennifer Delahunty Britz, the dean of admissions at the private liberal arts school Kenyon College, was among the first to admit this when she wrote an op-ed titled "To All the Girls I've Rejected" in The New York Times in 2006.

"The reality is that because young men are rarer, they're more valued applicants," she wrote, adding that two-thirds of colleges report that more women than men apply for admission. "What messages are we sending young women that they must, nearly 25 years after the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment, be even more accomplished than men to gain admission to the nation's top colleges?"

Delahunty Britz's acknowledgment opened the floodgates, and reporters began looking closely at schools that admitted a much higher percentage of male than female applicants.

Of course, these gaps don't necessarily mean that women are being discriminated against. It's possible that the male applicant pool is better qualified on average, though that's hard to ascertain when colleges generally resist releasing their admissions data.

The University of Richmond, a private liberal arts school, acknowledged in 2009 that it attempts to keep its gender balance at about 50-50, which meant women's admit rate was about 13 percentage points lower than men's over the previous 10 years. Admissions officer Marilyn Hesser told CBS that men and women had about the same standardized test scores, but that male applicants' GPA was lower on average. (The college's admission rate suddenly became more gender neutral the following year, in 2010-2011, when men's acceptance rate was only 3 percentage points higher than women's.)

The same year, the College of William and Mary, a public institution in Virginia, accepted 39.4 percent of its male applicants and 27.2 percent of female applicants. The school's admissions dean, Henry Broaddus, said men have slightly higher standardized test scores but lower GPAs than women, on average.

Broaddus defended the policy, insisting that William and Mary's female students want the college to to be gender-balanced and that colleges in general risk becoming less attractive to both men and women when the gender balance tips too far toward women.

...[more in link]

[Valmy]

This kind of thing has been going on at liberal arts schools for awhile, or at least it was when I was applying back in 1995. 

[Admiral Yi]

What's diverse for the goose is diverse for the gander.

[MadImmortalMan]

The school's admissions dean, Henry Broaddus, said men have slightly higher standardized test scores but lower GPAs than women, on average.

Is that consistent?

[garbon]

The school's admissions dean, Henry Broaddus, said men have slightly higher standardized test scores but lower GPAs than women, on average.

Is that consistent?

[MadImmortalMan]

I mean is it a regular occurrence that men have lower grades and higher test scores. I'm curious why that would be.

[Neil]

I mean is it a regular occurrence that men have lower grades and higher test scores. I'm curious why that would be.

Probably because part of their grade is based on things other than tests.

[DGuller]

I mean is it a regular occurrence that men have lower grades and higher test scores. I'm curious why that would be.

Grades measure consistency and maturity, tests measure peak performance.

[CountDeMoney]

Fuck Admissions, how about a little special treatment from HR?

[11B4V]

Fuck Admissions, how about a little special treatment from HR?

Where's our Languish.org HR subject matter expert?? Fuck HR is just unreliable. 

[Phillip V]

Fuck Admissions, how about a little special treatment from HR?

Google: GPAs don’t predict anything about who is going to be a successful employee.

“One of the things we’ve seen from all our data crunching is that G.P.A.’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless — no correlation at all except for brand-new college grads, where there’s a slight correlation,” said Laszlo Bock, Google’s senior vice president of operations. “Google famously used to ask everyone for a transcript and G.P.A.’s and test scores, but we don’t anymore, unless you’re just a few years out of school. We found that they don’t predict anything. What’s interesting is the proportion of people without any college education at Google has increased over time as well. So we have teams where you have 14 percent of the team made up of people who’ve never gone to college.”

“After two or three years, your ability to perform at Google is completely unrelated to how you performed when you were in school, because the skills you required in college are very different,” he said. “You’re also fundamentally a different person. You learn and grow, you think about things differently. Another reason is that I think academic environments are artificial environments. People who succeed there are sort of finely trained, they’re conditioned to succeed in that environment. One of my own frustrations when I was in college and grad school is that you knew the professor was looking for a specific answer. You could figure that out, but it’s much more interesting to solve problems where there isn’t an obvious answer. You want people who like figuring out stuff where there is no obvious answer.”

https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130620142512-35894743-on-gpas-and-brain-teasers-new-insights-from-google-on-recruiting-and-hiring

[CountDeMoney]

I really wouldn't consider Google as indicative of your average American RomneyCorp.

[Admiral Yi]

Sometimes I get the feeling they're running a cult over there.

[CountDeMoney]

I don't think they even wear ties over there.  There's something just not right about that.

[HVC]

Fuck Admissions, how about a little special treatment from HR?

Where's our Languish.org HR subject matter expert?? Fuck HR is just unreliable. 

Probably eating dinner at some gas station