Newsflash: If Girls are Better Students, Why is it More Difficult for them to get into College?

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If Girls are Better Students then Boys, Why is it More Difficult for them to get into College?

Women have been working for the past century to gain equal access to education and jobs. Although women still don’t make as much money as men, women now make up 57% of college students in the United States. Studies have found that this can be attributed to the tendency for men to drop out of high school at a higher rate, are more likely to join the military, or they have other job opportunities after high school that do not necessitate a college education (Birnbaum & Yakaboski). However, it has also been found that even from an early age, girls are simply better students than boys. They mature faster, have more flexible learning styles, and from my personal experience, girls seem to be much more able to sit, listen, and do their work than boys (Saman). This has translated to girls having better college applications than boys, for multiple reasons. However, colleges want to maintain a gender ratio as close to 50:50 as possible. Therefore, boys are having an easier time gaining admittance to colleges than girls, even though they are not as good of students.

In the past, women did not receive as much education, or the same type, as men because it was believed that they needed to know how to take care of children and a home, and nothing else. It was thought that educating a woman would have negative consequences, even sterility. However, slowly but surely, throughout the 20^th century, women began to attend universities and receive degrees. What they were able to accomplish in the workplace is another matter that I won’t get into. Colgate University finally began admitting women as late as 1970. Here we are, in 2011, and we actually have more women enrolled in universities than men. Women finally have some solid statistics saying that they are doing something better than men.

The problem with this success is that men and women don’t want to attend colleges that have more than 60% of the student body comprised of women. For some reason, that 60% tipping point turns people off. Colleges are all about marketing themselves to attract as many smart students as possible. But when more of the best students applying are women, suddenly admissions counselors don’t see men and women equal. Instead of choosing the 2000 best candidates overall, they choose the 1000 best men and the 1000 best women. But those men have lower test scores, grades, and fewer appealing personal activities than the women. This means that more women are being rejected from colleges even though they probably deserve to go there. And more men are being accepted into schools even though they are performing worse than the women. It sends a message to girls that they need to work even harder and do more activities in high school than boys, just to get into the same schools. And it tells boys that they don’t need to work as hard as girls, and still get the same result of admissions to the schools they want.

Jennifer Britz wrote an article in the New York Times about this problem called “To all the Girls I’ve Rejected.” As an admissions counselor at a university, she sees first hand that admissions counselors favor male applicants in order to keep the gender ratio equal. Seeing her own daughter on the receiving end of a waitlist letter from a different school inspired her to write this article. I actually got very emotional when I first read this a few months ago because not long ago, I was one of those girls doing everything I could in high school in order to get into the colleges I wanted. Meanwhile, I saw my male peers in school goofing off, copying homework, and putting in minimal effort and still getting accepted into great schools. It just didn’t feel fair and I felt powerless. For girls like me, there is nothing more we can do. But does that mean we have to lower our standards for the type of college we can get into? Many girls probably end up going to their third or fourth choice school as a result of this favoring of males.

Affirmative action at universities was created to allow racial minority and female students to gain access to universities, which were previously made up of mostly white males. It was designed to sort of make up for past discrimination. Many people disagree with affirmative action because it has a zero-sum result: for every minority or woman admitted, one white man is not admitted. People think this is wrong when the white man actually has better test scores and the like. Some say it goes against the American way of working hard and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, not getting a free ride just because you are a minority. Some states have actually repealed affirmative action in creative ways. California’s Propositions 209 was passed in 1996. The wording of the main part of the propositions is as follows:

(a) The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting (4).

Essentially, this is saying the states will not discriminate against race, including whites. So people who are pro-affirmative action (against discrimination) voted for this bill because they thought of it as something that was anti-discriminations (which it is technically.) However, they were not aware that it basically eliminated affirmative action.

The problem with using affirmative action to benefit men, is that they were not discriminated against in the past. They have always had the full opportunity to education that women and racial minorities had to work for. And some may argue that racial minorities have lower test scores or grades because they haven’t been given as good education prior to college and they may have had fewer opportunities overall due to factors such as poverty. However, males in general have lower test scores, lower grades, and participate in fewer activities simply because they are not performing as well as they could. Clearly, if the women of the same population are doing better academically, its not the environment that is having the adverse effect on the males, it’s their gender itself.

The gender imbalance is prevalent at Colgate University just like many other liberal arts colleges. We already have a 55:45 ratio of women to men. And it is noticeable that women tend to spend more time doing their work, make up a larger percent of the “library crowd,” and participate more in class relative to the men on campus. I get a sense of apathy from my male peers when it comes to academics. They don’t care as much about what grades they get, whether they understand the material in class, or whether they contribute equitably in group projects. Its frustrating but as a woman, I don’t feel like I can call men out on their laziness, especially because it likely won’t make any difference.

No one seems to have an answer to this gender imbalance and unjust admissions policy that is taking place all over our country. Each news article I read and the video I watched don’t have an answer. They all agree that its unfair, but colleges don’t want to budge on this gender ratio because it will make them look bad. It feels anti-feminist to suggest that boys should be treated with special care to make them better students to bring them up to the same level as the girls. However, that may be the only way to actually balance out the gender ratio on college campuses. At the very least, the message needs to be sent to males in elementary school, high school, and colleges that its not okay to give their minimal effort while they watch their female peers working as hard as possible.

Birnmaum, M., & Yakaboski, T. (2011) The legan and policy implications of male-benefiting admissions policies at public institutions: Can they ever be considered affirmative action for men? http://journals.naspa.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?context=jsarp&article=6200&date=&mt=MTMwMzMyNjg2Nw==&access_ok_form=Continue

Britz, Jennifer Delahunty, To All the Girls I’ve Rejected. New York Times (2006) http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/23/opinion/23britz.html

NBC Nightly News. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22652639/ns/nightly_news_with_brian_williams-the_truth_about_boys_and_girls/

Saman Malik Global Committee Saudi Arabia. Are Girls Better Learners than Boys? Sep. 16, 2009.