Girls applying for econ PhD... an advantage?

[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 butler´s poll

[Antichron]

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 butler´s 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.)

[dieanotherday]

haha, I hope that's true. coz I'm a girl and I've never thought about this b4.

[user_name]

You've gotta be a US citizen to enjoy any kind of diversity advantage, right?

[werther]

so in the end, gender premium exists?

since i am a pessimist i'll just ignore i heard any of this

[Jhai]

I think there's an advantage. I've been told by three female econ faculty at my school that there's an advantage in getting in, but that you have to put up with some sexist bs after you're in.

Basically, it looks bad if the school has an extreme gender imbalance, in both graduation rates and acceptance rates. So all things being equal, an econ program is more likely to chose a girl than a guy. The key is that it is "all things being equal." I doubt any program worth its stuff is going to accept a worse student over a better one because of the students' genders.

So it's a slight advantage in admissions. I imagine, however, it might be a bigger advantage when deciding where to attend - since the number of qualified female applicants is so small, programs are probably going to fight over them a bit more to get them to attend.

user_name - I expect that both US citizens and internationals who are female get some sort of diversity advantage, altho the US citizens may get a slightly higher one. But for race and the like, it's true that only US citizens get an advantage if they're hispanic or black.

[Econ2006]

This year's entering class at Cornell has 5 females, 17 males.

[Freethinker]

Entering class at Berkeley: 5 women and 22 men.

[werther]

perhaps the oc is higher for girls
or we're just not competitive enough

whatever together

[asquare]

For what it's worth, Michigan's second year class has 3 women out of 21 total; the first and third year classes are much more balanced (about 1/3 women).

Public schools in California and, now, Michigan, are legally prohibited from considering race, gender, or ethnicity in admissions. So there is no formal advantage to minorities or women applying to public schools in those states.