Soon-to-Be Open Secret (Males in College Admission) | Hacker News Reader

Soon-to-Be Open Secret (Males in College Admission)

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65 pointstokenadult62 comments

I don't think anything high schools say should have any impact on admissions at all.

70 - 90% of my grades in high school were homework. I tested out of 2 years of math and 3 years of Japanese by studying the curriculum and learning everything. None of the classes I tested out of counted towards my GPA. I passed 4 AP tests, but my GPA was 2.4. If principal hadn't kept me there I would of been in and out in 2 years. I suspect he didn't let me leave because the high school gets funding from the state per student enrolled.

I did four years of Japanese classes in one and got a five on the calculus test, but my GPA was below the cutoff for engineering, so I had to get a professor there to write a special recommendation to let me in. Somebody with a high GPA who passed no AP tests has preference in admissions over me.

I've got nothing against using test scores for admissions, but grades are incredibly subjective. 99% of the time they're not a measure of ability, they're a measure of obedience, and your ability to persuade teachers. And colleges, by extension are choosing to admit people who are more concerned with appearances than with actually solving the problem at hand.

The same thing is true for college, so I imagine if they're selecting for those criteria they'll do well.

"99% of the time they're not a measure of ability, they're a measure of obedience, and your ability to persuade teachers."

This is false. Grades correlate reasonably well with ability. Plenty of people get good grades without corresponding ability, but 99% is a laughable exaggeration.

Grades correlate reasonably well with ability.

What would be evidence for that statement, in view of the parent comment to yours that disagrees with that conclusion? Where would one look for research on this issue?

One old book that I read back in high school days

http://www.amazon.com/Wad-Ja-Get-Grading-Game-American-Educa...

suggested that grades correlate less well with ability (or any other meaningful characteristic of students) than supposed by the teachers who give grades to students. I'd love to hear about current research on this issue.

"Grades correlate reasonably well with ability."

... as measured by grades.

If nothing you did in school had any relation whatsoever to the real world, you got screwed.

"If nothing you did in school had any relation whatsoever to the real world, you got screwed."

And, since no one ever gets screwed, we can therefore conclude that your original argument is correct!

Except that's not what I said. Too many people around here try to pretend that grades mean absolutely nothing. I doubt that nothing you did in school had any relation to the real world, and I pointed that out to you in the hope that you'd realize that the burden of proof in this argument rests on those who would try to argue that grades mean nothing. In the absence of actual data, which no one has provided, it doesn't make sense to give any merit to the anecdotal arguments of the minority rather than the equally anecdotal arguments of the majority.

On the contrary, I stated that grades measured the ability to get grades, which is almost tautological.

Demonstrating anything beyond that would require proof, hence the burden of proof is squarely yours. :)

Seriously? Do you really believe that? Given a room of people do you honestly believe that in talking about, let's say Math, or Physics, or Chemistry that you couldn't immediately identify which of them had grades in the top 25th percentile versus the lower 25th percentile? I bet I could _even without having studied those domains_ in 20+ years.

Now, I'll agree that grades don't correlate _perfectly_ with ability for _everyone_ - we all know the bright slacker who doesn't turn in his homework, and maybe skips a test or two. But, in general, a student who score 95% in physics knows their material very well. A student who scores 15% in physics is probably clueless.

Lets test your hypothesis. I put your written communication skills in the bottom 50%. Did you earn good marks in English?

Horrible marks in English. And yes, I do apologize for subjecting everyone to my subpar written communication skills.

Touche: hypothesis supported

Also sorry for being snooty. It is easy to get riled up whenever someone tells you how smart you are.

This is especially true of people who make a living from ostensibly being clever. Some of us, clearly including myself, are insecure.

Math, Physics, and Chemistry are easy to objectively grade, so I'd accept that they tend to have higher grade quality (a notional metric of the correlation of grades to ability) than e.g. literature, drama, sociology, pottery, etc, where the grade quality correlates to the ability of the grader.

Physics classes don't prove a blanket statement regarding grade quality over all subjects, any more than Yao Ming proves that Chinese people tend to be seven feet tall, or the King of Sweden proves that Swedes tend to be kings.

With a range of classes from remedial, normal, advanced, and honors and a selection of electives I think most people's are intelligent enough to get a 4.0 in HS but few people can get there without significant drive. Compare that with a medical program where you really do need to be fairly intelligent, knowledgeable about your subject and willing to work your ass off to get a 4.0.

I feel it's safe to say that you are an outlier.

Anybody who's exceptionally good at anything is an outlier.

I think he just meant you're not indicative of a large population. The article is about boys generally, not particular ones that don't do their homework but do well on tests.

> I would of been in and out in 2 years

"I of a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color have their skin but by the content have their character.

I of a dream today!"

Is the `of' significant?

He is pointing out that "would of" should have been written as "would have."

I don't know. To me, "would of" is not a typo such as "mroe" instead of "more" caused by a slip of the fingers, or skipping over a word because you are hurrying, and it's not a minor mental slip such as continuing a short-term pattern of apostrophe use, e.g. "the cat's over here, the cat's over there, the cat's everywhere and the pigeon's are in a state", and it is not in the same category as the mixup between "your" and "you're", because both are in very common use - "would've" is in very common use but "would of" is not (500M Google results for would've plus would have, only 5M for would of).

"Would of" gives me the impression of someone who either doesn't read much (where do you ever see 'would of' in a formal published paper or book outside quotations/dialogue?), or doesn't pronounce what they say clearly (because if they did it would reinforce that 've and of are different), or doesn't pay enough attention to what they are writing to think 'oh that's not right'.

It was also because it was in the midst of a post about how the author was great at a foreign language and should have been allowed to finish schooling sooner, even though this is the sort of mistake that seems to be made more by uneducated people which would counter the idea that leaving school sooner would have been a good plan.

I was trying to draw attention to it by butchering a famous speech to make it stand out, and because I don't just want to say "dumbass ha ha", but wonder whether it is in a different class of mistake to the usual mistakes seen on the internet (possibly along with "if I would have known" - how can people say that instead of "if I had known" without realising that it means something completely different?).

Also, interesting how as soon as I posted it it was voted down, then over a day or two it climbed back to +4 or so, and now has been knocked down again. What kinds of people are doing which kind of voting?

Interesting.

I make silly mistakes when I am tired. I doubt more schooling would help me.

I wish I knew more about this such as:

* what affect on the data would there be if, rather than taking "scores" that are presumably an SAT Verbal, SAT Writing, and SAT Math one took an SAT Verbal, SAT Math, and an SAT II Science.

* what portion of this might be attributable to differences in adolescent development? Female puberty usually starts between 9 and 14. Male puberty usually starts between 10 and 17. That means that males are more likely to be dealing with puberty during the period that their marks and scores are being taken for college admission.

* what portion of this is cultural? Is it more socially acceptable for females to excel academically than males? I'm usually not into the idea that males and females learn differently, but I am not an adolescent development psychologist and therefore am just spouting nonsense.

The one thing that I really love about this article is that it addresses something really important: no one is willing to talk about it.

Women could also be more conformist, so they fit into the institutional requirements better. What are the stats for non institutional performance, like entrepreneurship?

I can provide links to some of the SAT data you are looking for, current to the most recently reported high school graduating class (class of 2009). These links are mostly links to .PDF files:

Composite scores:

http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/sat_perce...

Math plus Critical Reading scores:

http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/sat_perce...

Math scores:

http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/SAT-Math-...

Critical Reading scores:

http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/SAT-Criti...

Writing scores:

http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/SAT-Writi...

Some score percentiles by gender and ethnicity:

http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/SAT-Perce...

Subject Test percentile ranks (no data on gender):

http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/SAT-Subje...

The ACT provides test score percentiles, with some data by gender:

http://www.act.org/news/data/09/pdf/two.pdf

ACT also reports high school course-taking patterns self-reported by test-takers:

http://www.act.org/news/data/09/pdf/three.pdf

Some of these data allow counts of whether more men or more women are taking the tests, which is suggestive of which group is submitting more applications to colleges that require the tests.

SAT state reports

http://professionals.collegeboard.com/data-reports-research/...

e.g.

http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/MN_09_03_...

also allow gender comparisons for particular places, and a look at which colleges get the most SAT score reports submitted from each state.

Some more things to consider.

- Growth spurts are tied to improvements in mental performance. This means that a girl who has hit puberty has significant cognitive advantages over a boy the same age who is not.

- Test scores understate the difference. Some stereotypically female traits (like a tendency to double check work) both help in the classroom and hurt on timed tests. So the actual academic performance gap is larger than the SATs will state.

- Broad based IQ studies have found that median performance among women is higher, but variability among men is higher. This means that more women are solidly above average than men, but the top performers are usually men. (The bottom performers are even more heavily weighted towards men.)

When you get into gender and academic performance nothing is as simple as it looks. But the difficulty of the scientific questions are nothing compared to the difficulty of the political issues that come up.

It doesn't matter. Who cares? White males aren't a team. The only drawback I can see from white males being underrepresented in college is that white males are underrepresented in college, which is a tautology.

If white males were being treated differently so were being held back, that would be a major problem, but that's not the case[1].

Moreover, white males seem to be doing just fine professionally, because college is a very leaky predictor of professional success. College should be more of a means than an end. Apparently there's more to life than college.

[1] Except through, perhaps, several links of causality chain. And when you start making those claims, the slope gets slippery fast.

One theory I’ve heard is that a lot of white males can get decent jobs without college degrees, so they do so. Members of other demographic groups, though, are really screwed if they try to enter the adult workforce without a college degree. So they’re more motivated to get one.

That's an interesting theory, and it probably explains some of the decisions made by many people I know. Is this a theory you've just heard casually mentioned or has there been actual research on this?

If college makes people more productive and college-educated females continue to leave the workforce at a higher rate than college-educated men, a lower proportion of college-educated men will mean a less productive society. This is only one measure of a society, and clearly not the most important one, but this trend does have actual ramifications. It matters.

> If white males were being treated differently so were being held back, that would be a major problem, but that's not the case

In some cases this is a problem. A larger problem is the gender preference of studies. White males tend to study subjects such as engineering at a much higher rate than women. Women in turn studies courses such as education and BA at a much greater rate.

The problem (at least here) is that in University of Technologies and engineering departments, women are promoted – which causes a severe imbalance.

I would prefer it however if the government stop all admission preferences (race, gender, etc…) and abstain from attempts at social engineering. The best approach would be to make the process "blind" by removing names and anything that can indicate gender or race from the application process.

"Who cares?" The heterosexual girls/boys care, as noted in the article.

Huge numbers of Young Albertan men who would otherwise be applying to college are now going straight to work in the oil sands.

It is dangerous, but high paying work. Few women go there at all. Actually it is attracting a huge number of men from all over Canada.

I don't know if it's the only factor, or if the experiences of educators in other countries are similar, but it probably should be mentioned...

> It is dangerous, but high paying work. Few women go there at all.

Every oil/gold/silver rush attracts sex-workers, most of them women.

Sex workers would be negligible compared to the men. Have you ever heard of an exodus of women to be hookers in alberta?

I have now! ;)

What schools are these where women outnumber men? Perhaps it's just CS and engineering but my graduating class for example had maybe 5 women out of 200 total people. Not even close to a majority. The entire university was better but still bad 2/3 men 1/3 women.

Most of the few remaining colleges in the United States with male student majorities do indeed seem to be colleges with mostly technical major subjects.

Or military academies.

The (private, liberal-arts) college I attended has for many years now had a fairly striking imbalance; currently it's 59% female and has been hovering around that 60/40 mark for at least the past decade, if not more.

Edit: the US Census bureau provides data. Most recent figures (http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/school/cps2008....) show 10.3 million female college students to 8.3 million male college students.

The imbalance is likely because of the introduction of soft majors designed to appeal to women, like communications and human resources. You don't actually need to go to college for this stuff, and it's probably a waste of time and money. However, it does enable women to command a higher salary like the men that go into trades do. Anybody that's ever been in a nice neighborhood should have noticed the number of work trucks.

Are fewer males applying as well? If only 40% of applicants are male, then I'd say the ratio of college entrants is just right.

Otherwise, I don't see a problem. I don't really see a problem anyway. I never saw a need to have exact demographic representation in all fields. The only time exact demographic representation seems to be an issue (outside this article) is when white males are overrepresented.

So white males are underrepresented in college. The world won't end. It may actually be better in the long run, so I'm not sure what the fuss is.

Why would it be better in the long run?

Just to provide the other perspective: One could argue that fewer males applying could be a problem. It's easier to make the argument with a minority group that has been discriminated against so I'm going to go the easier route. If fewer African Americans apply to college, it could be because they have less money and assume they can't afford it, or feel that large institutions (no matter how liberal) are stacked against them, or that they weren't given the tools to get in as easily and so don't even bother applying.

Those are all troubling reasons for someone not doing something. Now, people can and do prefer different things, but sometimes we shape our preferences to what we see as attainable or what we're encouraged toward. So, if only 40% of applicants are male, the question is "why". If it's because they just genuinely aren't interested, that's fine. But society is very complex. Sometimes someone wants something and just gives up on it because it seems like it wasn't meant for them. It definitely happened to me and golf - when it seems like an institution (or parts) aren't so enthusiastic about you, you can start avoiding it.

You're totally right that the world won't end. If there's no underlying cause, it doesn't matter. However, it might be symptomatic of something. It's worth figuring out what's going on since it does stick out. And I haven't heard really any arguments about why it's happening.

Part of this gets down to the question of free will. Let's say that more males prefer to go into trade craft (plumbers, carpenters, etc.) and that's an area you can make a lot of money in and college isn't needed. OK, that explains the discrepancy, but go down another level and is our culture pushing men to trades and women to college - even in slight ways that would cause that effect on the numbers? If it is, is it a problem? The world needs trades people. The world needs college educated people.

I guess on the last part, I do see it as a problem because let's say that males and females have the same average aptitude for things - an IQ of 100 for academia and an IQ of 100 for trades so to speak. If culture is pushing females to college and males to trades, we aren't getting an efficient system - it means that there are some females that have an inherent talent for trades that have been pushed into academia. Here's an example:

Matt - 110 academic; 90 trade. Bill - 100 trade; 100 academic. Robin - 90 academic; 110 trade. Julia - 100 trade; 100 academic.

Now, from those hypothetical inherent talents, Matt should go to college, Robin should go to trade school, and the other two are a coin flip. But, if Robin is pushed towards academia and Matt towards trade, they might end up with scores that are the reverse of what their inherent talent is (let's say admissions scores of 200 for Robin and 180 for Matt). Robin was encouraged to apply herself in the things that show up on an academic score, but really Matt is the one in that example that has better talent. At that point, Robin should be the one admitted - she's become smarter and is better prepared. However, Matt's lacking might have simply been his upbringing.

It really gets into the nitty-gritty of free will and will drive you nuts if you think about it too much. Your attitude might be the right one to take since my head is hurting just thinking about this.

The social dynamics can get really ugly when the m/f ration hits a tipping point, generally thought to be around 60%.

The focus on white males is because the system does everything it can to get "males of color" into college (well, everything but competently teach them the 3Rs, at least in the US with Dick and Jane and Their Running Dog Spot (Whole Word nonsense, phrase coined by Jerry Pournelle, who's wife's career was teaching the hardest cases how to read)).

I went to a 62%/38% female/male ratio, and social dynamics were alright. A lot of girls kept their hometown bf. (they had to), lots of parties, and getting laid was easier.

Now I had a close friend that went to a 70%/30% guys/girls school, and the atmosphere was definetly different. Things were more boring, nobody was getting laid, and the few women that where there were acting like they were walking over water. People were more concentrated in studying than having fun (parties with only dudes, get boring pretty fast).

I know I am overgeneralizing, but things were ok.

Now if the ratio gets even worse, then who knows. Girls/women will have to date somebody that makes less then them or that has lower education level.

To a certain degree, that is what currently educated black females are facing.

> Are fewer males applying as well? If only 40% of applicants are male, then I'd say the ratio of college entrants is just right.

> Otherwise, I don't see a problem. I don't really see a problem anyway.

That reasoning wasn't acceptable when other groups were under-represented, so why is it acceptable now?

I think it was acceptable then too.

That may be, but a lot of folks didn't think that it was acceptable then. If they think that it's different when white males are involved, I'd like to hear why.

Having large numbers of males with a feeling of being left out tends to lead to societal distress. It's why people are concerned about the male/female imbalance in China and India. There will soon be millions of men in both countries with few prospects of getting laid and this generally has bad consequences for neighboring nations.

It's been a concern in the past, too. The distant past.

In 1899, Stanford University limited female enrollment to 500 students, apparently out of concern that the university would dilute the men's education. Not sure when that restriction was lifted, but it's certainly not in place today.

Source: http://janestanford.stanford.edu/biography.html

The restriction was lifted in 1933, I believe. Some of Jane Stanford's other requirements were 1) free tuition and 2) no summer school, since students should get out and see the real world during the summer. I'm glad they let more women in, although I wish they had left the free tuition requirement in. :)

I attend the University of Alberta and this is the first I've heard of a controversy, so I think the story may be a bit overblown. I don't recall seeing any of the posters campus was supposedly 'awash' with.

I'm so confused. I read the beginning 3 times and I'm not sure which side is complaining about not enough men and which side is complaining about not enough women.

I thought it was confusing too, but I think the writer was arguing that men are getting disadvantaged because they are underperforming.

I thought it was confusing too, but I think the writer was arguing that men are getting disadvantaged because they are underperforming.

That's an interesting choice of word. Men are not underperforming because of lack of effort on their part, but because of the feminization of the previous stage of education (mainly female teachers, the switch in emphasis from exams to coursework, etc)

One thing to keep in mind is that lobbies like NOW, the AMA, UAW, etc, aren't really interested in "right and wrong" or even representing their constituents. The people who work for those organizations tend to continue to represent the platform on which the organization was founded, regardless of whether or not the objectives were achieved. All three of those organizations are great examples: NOW was founded to bring equality to women, the AMA was originally formed to ensure adequate licensure restrictions to drive out quacks, and the UAW was founded to ensure adequate protections for workers.

Now women are essentially more than equal and men are requiring help. Now the supply of American medical training is so restrictive that we have created a whole work-around degree program (the Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine), and we consume a disproportionate number of foreign medical graduates, draining other countries of their doctors. American auto workers are now so more than equal that the corporations are bankrupt under the burden of medical bills accumulated by retirees.

NOW is still advocating for more special consideration for women, the AMA is still concerned about the quality of american doctors (raling against foreign medical grads, etc), and UAW is still advocating for better compensation for auto workers.

The lobbies exist to support their platforms. They will continue their original platforms because those people want to keep their jobs.

We could drop all quotas, let individual choice and the market determine the higher education populace, and fire all the social engineers who waste space and tax dollars pondering this rubbish...

That wouldn't work though, b/c liberals wouldn't have anything else to be paid for if the optimum solution emerged without their meddling.

Unfortunately, I have been unable to open the article, so I am not sure how relevant this is. But the thing that comes to mind, based on some of the comments here, is that Blacks have joined (or were doing so) the military at high-ish rates because it was an opportunity for them to get ahead (the military is apparently somewhat more color-blind than the civilian world when it comes to promotions and compensation). Then the Gulf War happened and suddenly folks were screaming "discrimination" because Blacks were at a disproportionately high risk for getting shot and killed due to being in the military in relatively high numbers.

Perhaps the answer is instead to eliminate any sex/race/nationality preferences. I'm assuming the reason for the lack of white males relates to every other group has been getting some preference at some point in time.

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