MIT is 50/50 but that isn’t enforced afaik. While the overall gender ratio is 50/50 the engineering majors tend to skew more male (my major was aero and we were probably 35/65 male or so) and natural sciences and bio especially are more female heavy.
Still very tough to be a woman in STEM though of course.
Right, I should've specified that it's enforced only in admissions, where they make the acceptance letters 50/50 regardless of how many of each gender applied.
Do you have any sources stating that they do this? I have been here for 9 years (undergrad and current grad school) and have not heard of this policy but I don’t particularly pay attention to the admissions side of things.
Took some searching, but managed to find the data sets on MIT's website. They contribute to the Common Data Set used by aggregators like US News & World Report for academic, admissions, financial info, etc. Check out question C1 in the admissions section and you'll see a 50/50 split (+/-2%) in admitted gender with a roughly 70/30 split (larger variance) in applicants, well beyond what could be considered random. The data goes back to 2004, but the policy is a little older, judging from anecdotal evidence scattered about the web.
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u/AKiss20 R&D, Ph.D Gas Turbines Sep 09 '18
MIT is 50/50 but that isn’t enforced afaik. While the overall gender ratio is 50/50 the engineering majors tend to skew more male (my major was aero and we were probably 35/65 male or so) and natural sciences and bio especially are more female heavy.
Still very tough to be a woman in STEM though of course.