<p>Does anyone have a sense of what the graduation rates are at engineering schools such as MIT, Caltech, Carnegie Mellon? How about the engineering programs at schools like Penn or Michigan, Tufts–do more girls switch to liberal arts science programs? My daughter is quite good at math and science, and is interested in all the schools shown. I’d rather not have to transfer for reasons of unhappiness with either the academic or social atmosphere.</p>
<p>I’m of the female pool and a CS and MechE major. There are actually a good number of girls in my CS courses; in MechE, not so much.
There are a few engineering societies/sororities aimed towards women she should consider joining if it’s available on her campus or on a national level.</p>
<p>It is a male-dominated path, if she chooses to switch out of a college solely because of the number of girls in her class, then she may face problems in her actual career.</p>
<p>Thanks for your comments. I don’t disagree with you, but someone had told me that some schools are more supportive than others–for instance, the U of MD had a “women in engineering” week that she attended, with role models, etc. What school are you attending? </p>
<p>My daughter is in high school, and I wonder whether some of the universities that are sending her recruiting letters just want her to boost their incoming student numbers; so I want to know if anyone has info on what percentage graduate at the listed schools, for instance.</p>
<p>For graduation rates there is a site that reports it for a huge number of colleges. Remove the spaces and go to college results .org. There is a feature that lets you view the results separately for women and men.</p>
<p>These are overall graduation rates, so they might be helpful for Caltech, but they will not tell you whether someone who went to Tufts graduated with a degree in engineering, or something else. </p>
<p>IMHO one should not go to a college where you are required to do engineering (either because that is all they offer, or because you were only admitted to the engineering program and it is difficult to transfer) unless you are SURE you want to be an engineer. Maybe you come from a family of engineers, you have done lots of work in the field growing up, and you really know what you are getting into. If you think you may want to be an engineer it is much safer to go somewhere that gives you a choice. Start in the engineering major (you have to start as a freshman to get the courses in), see how it goes. If you don’t like it, then switch to something else. </p>
<p>Lots of people, male and female bail out of engineering. I don’t know whether the female bail out rate is higher than the male rate. Fewer women enter the programs in the first place.</p>
<p>Many places have societies and formal efforts to recruit and retain women in engineering. I don’t know how well they work. I gather the low representation has more to do with liking, or not, the culture, the isolated nature of the work, and general lack of fascination with doing the sorts of things engineers do. A club could help with loneliness, perhaps, but that alone would not make someone stay if engineering if history is really much more interesting.</p>
<p>The National Academy of Sciences has looked at female participation in engineering and science education. You might find some background about the issue from their website. I doubt they report grade rates for individual colleges, but they may discuss the rate at which women finish their studies in engineering.</p>
<p>thanks–very useful info!</p>
<p>From the National Academy</p>
<p>From Scarcity to Visibility: Gender Differences in the Careers of Doctoral Scientists and Engineers </p>
<p>[From</a> Scarcity to Visibility: Gender Differences in the Careers of Doctoral Scientists and Engineers](<a href=“http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=5363&page=50]From”>3: Entry into Science | From Scarcity to Visibility: Gender Differences in the Careers of Doctoral Scientists and Engineers | The National Academies Press)</p>