Quote:
Originally Posted by veroniquaz
Inspired by the discussion on Berkeley diversity form ... I would like to know what do you think about females applying for econ PhD? Is the fact of being a girl an advantage in admissions? For those in grad schools what is the male/female ratio in your department?
Any other comments on females in econ will be strongly appreciated.
(I happen to be a girl, but this question is only connected to curiosity, not that I would hope for differential treatment or something.)
... and yes I admit I picked option 5 in butlerīs poll  |
It is my impression that there is a definite push in the profession to increase the representation of female faculty and graduate students.
A few female/male statistics:
My entering class at MIT has 10 females and 16 males.
Last year's entering class at UCLA had 8 females and 11 males, if I remember correctly.
Based on a group picture of the Stanford entering class, there are 6 females and 11 males
Based on the Princeton first year class photos, there are 5 females and 17 males
Based on lots of anecdotal evidence, at Harvard, the first year class consists of about 26-ish males and 2 females.
I would imagine that, in response to the last statistic, Harvard will likely make a concerted effort to increase the representation of females in the 2007 entering class.
In defense of Harvard, I believe that this year's numbers were not due to any sort of biases in admissions or recruiting efforts, but primarily to what I viewed as a a fairly sizeable coordination effort on the part of the students during the recruiting period. A lot of us became good friends during the fly-outs and discussed our school choices extensively with one another. (Which served to increase the correlation of our grad. school choices.)