Gender bump? Forum

[amorfati]

I'm confused. Shouldn't those stats add up to 100%?

my thoughts exactly...

but also, let's say a school has 53% F, 47% M. Then are we saying you'd (possibly) get a boost as a male for being underrepresented? Or rather, might you get a sort of de facto boost as a female, since that school tends to take more female applicants anyway?

On second thought, though, I doubt that the latter is very likely. My guess is that gender imbalances have more to do with which schools males and females choose to attend -- or if they seek to go at all -- rather than with any deliberate admissions policy. But still, I suppose it is possible that some admissions committees might inadvertently lean towards certain qualities that could considered characteristically masculine or feminine -- so in that sense I guess the "de facto boost" is still a possibility.

(Or perhaps all these factors just cancel one another out and gender doesn't really matter.)

[r6_philly]

Sorry the stats are % of students compare to the overall student body of the same gender.

For example, Michigan,

8.8% of male student body are Asians while 17.1% of female student body are Asians.

It makes no statistical sense to do a percentage of overall student body since we are debating inequality based on gender. This is directly how LSAC classify them BTW, I only copied the numbers from the school ABA profile PDFs (only the Asian row in the table).

[Jen Loblaw]

piggy back question:

i am a female engineering student. would i get any tiny boost being that females are basically urms in the engineering world?

anyone?

[r6_philly]

I'm confused. Shouldn't those stats add up to 100%?

my thoughts exactly...

but also, let's say a school has 53% F, 47% M. Then are we saying you'd (possibly) get a boost as a male for being underrepresented? Or rather, might you get a sort of de facto boost as a female, since that school tends to take more female applicants anyway?

On second thought, though, I doubt that the latter is very likely. My guess is that gender imbalances have more to do with which schools males and females choose to attend -- or if they seek to go at all -- rather than with any deliberate admissions policy. But still, I suppose it is possible that some admissions committees might inadvertently lean towards certain qualities that could considered characteristically masculine or feminine -- so in that sense I guess the "de facto boost" is still a possibility.

(Or perhaps all these factors just cancel one another out and gender doesn't really matter.)

The are three sets of factors. Race vs. other race, gender vs. other gender, and gender vs. gender in a particular race. They are independent and can't be easily combined. So an Asian male is not under presented say at 8.8% of all male population, but Asian female is extremely over represented at 17.1%. So unless the ration of male:female applicants is exactly at 8.8:17.1, there will be a difference between Asian male selectivity to that of an Asian female.

So as it turns out, I don't think there is a 1:2 ratio at play for Michigan Asian applicants (correct me with data if anyone has it). So let's say if Michigan receive 1:1 M:F Asian applicants (Big if, but this is for illustration purpose). Make will get in at a rate of 8.8% while female at 17.1%. So if the school wants to be more gender neutral, it must try to balance the selectivity rate, then it will increase the rate of male while decreasing the rate of female (otherwise the over all Asian rate will increase which we know won't since overall they are over represented). Then if that happens, Asian male will receive a slight boost while females receive a slight penalty, not because of applicantion quality, but due to a internal ratio quota.

This all depends on the actual applicant ratio, which I don't know, so I am only using this as an example to display the dynamics of maintaining equality in selectivity - otherwise know as giving/taking away boost.

[St.Remy]

That makes no sense. Cornell doesn't have over 31% Asian population.

I think they're "% of Male" and "% of Female" population respectively. Therefore you wouldn't add them together.

[whymeohgodno]

piggy back question:

i am a female engineering student. would i get any tiny boost being that females are basically urms in the engineering world?

anyone?

No because no one cares how many engineering students a law school has.

[whymeohgodno]

That's a pretty large Asian sex gap right there. Maybe they hate Asian males.

[Nom Sawyer]

Ah your right R6 Philly.. I think I was just remembering harvard's and NYU's which are around 10% for both males and females.

[sissyclark]

piggy back question:

i am a female engineering student. would i get any tiny boost being that females are basically urms in the engineering world?

anyone?

No.

[r6_philly]

Ah your right R6 Philly.. I think I was just remembering harvard's and NYU's which are around 10% for both males and females.

I know you had to pick the 2 that were even. I think they must be aware of this and perhaps try to keep it in balance. Considering the rest of T14 (basically a similar pool of candidates) you have to wonder if H and N make a point to equal the gender, or the rest of the T14 favor Asian females. Mmmmm.

[Jen Loblaw]

piggy back question:

i am a female engineering student. would i get any tiny boost being that females are basically urms in the engineering world?

anyone?

No because no one cares how many engineering students a law school has.

i guess i was wondering if everything else was held constant, if gender would make a difference between two engineering applicants. altho that might be too specific of a question...

[whymeohgodno]

piggy back question:

i am a female engineering student. would i get any tiny boost being that females are basically urms in the engineering world?

anyone?

No because no one cares how many engineering students a law school has.

i guess i was wondering if everything else was held constant, if gender would make a difference between two engineering applicants. altho that might be too specific of a question...

It might but such a specific scenario is very unlikely to happen.

[bdubs]

Ah your right R6 Philly.. I think I was just remembering harvard's and NYU's which are around 10% for both males and females.

I know you had to pick the 2 that were even. I think they must be aware of this and perhaps try to keep it in balance. Considering the rest of T14 (basically a similar pool of candidates) you have to wonder if H and N make a point to equal the gender, or the rest of the T14 favor Asian females. Mmmmm.

If I had to guess, the composition of the applicant pool by race, gender and school is not normally distributed leading to an imbalance of admits/accepts for one race-gender combination. I doubt schools are thinking this much about their reported male/female split for an ORM.

[r6_philly]

If I had to guess, the composition of the applicant pool by race, gender and school is not normally distributed leading to an imbalance of admits/accepts for one race-gender combination. I doubt schools are thinking this much about their reported male/female split for an ORM.

Really? Peer schools in the same location (Columbia vs. NYU) with very similar numerical applicant qualities?

Columbia 10.9% M 17.9% F
NYU 10% M 10% F

Male is inline, makes sense. Female? That's an anomaly that needs to be considered..

[bdubs]

If I had to guess, the composition of the applicant pool by race, gender and school is not normally distributed leading to an imbalance of admits/accepts for one race-gender combination. I doubt schools are thinking this much about their reported male/female split for an ORM.

Really? Peer schools in the same location (Columbia vs. NYU) with very similar numerical applicant qualities?

Columbia 10.9% M 17.9% F
NYU 10% M 10% F

Male is inline, makes sense. Female? That's an anomaly that needs to be considered..

My hypothesis is that Asian females outperform females of other races on the LSAT.

As to why Asian female and male are different at Columbia vs NYU, yields are not an exact science. There is probably a huge overlap in terms of admits to both schools and which school a given applicant chooses may not be predictable. I was speaking more to the overall trend of Asian females outnumbering males in the T14.

[r6_philly]

My hypothesis is that Asian females outperform females of other races on the LSAT.

As to why Asian female and male are different at Columbia vs NYU, yields are not an exact science. There is probably a huge overlap in terms of admits to both schools and which school a given applicant chooses may not be predictable. I was speaking more to the overall trend of Asian females outnumbering males in the T14.

You quoted my statement regarding H and N, so I thought you meant to address that subject.

As for your first statement, since the stats are gender separated, you imply Asian females outperform females of other races while Asian males do it to a less extend. Then develop your hypo - either 1) Asian females are more competitive than Asian males (ha, think sports) or 2) females of other races are not as competitive as males of other races when compared to Asians. Or both?

[r6_philly]

As to why Asian female and male are different at Columbia vs NYU, yields are not an exact science. There is probably a huge overlap in terms of admits to both schools and which school a given applicant chooses may not be predictable. I was speaking more to the overall trend of Asian females outnumbering males in the T14.

It's not about predicting results, I am just discussing anomalies in stats. If make bar charts out of the data you are going to "wow" at these two, especially there is a fairly identifiable trend at the other schools.

[bdubs]

I meant that individual data points are not necessarily great predictors of admissions policies. If on the other hand we saw a time series of admissions stats for NYU that showed a consistent balance of M/F Asian students, then I would find that more likely that they have a policy of doing so.

The Ivey guide quote that I posted on the previous page noted that females underperform males on the LSAT, but it did not mention race in that statistic. If Asian females tended not to underperform their male peers, they would have a leg up in admissions.

This is all pretty speculative though.

[KevinP]

For the year of 07-08:

Mean LSAT for Asian Females = 151.90, Number of test takers = 4,985
Mean LSAT for Asian Males = 152.22, Number of test takers = 4,065

Of course this doesn't take into account "no response" but only 409 people chose that answer.


Wow..... more Asian females take the LSAT but not enough to justify the huge discrepancy in law school based on numbers alone. Maybe Asian females, along with females in general, have a tendency to have a higher GPA?