My D21 is interested in majoring in math and pursuing a pre-med track. My D21 is strong in math and believes math may be a more versatile major for grad school should her plans for med school change.
We have heard that math is a major where females are under represented. My niece (who is currently studying civil engineering in college) told my D21 that being a female applicant wanting to major in a STEAM discipline will help my D21 with admissions into a university and/or specific college.
Would the lack of female math majors help my D21 get an edge in the admissions process?
Regarding your daughter’s college search in general, you may want to seek out a *Princeton Review/i sampling, “Great Schools for Mathematics Majors,” in which an appealing mix of liberal arts colleges (e.g., Haverford, Amherst, Hamilton, Williams, Bowdoin, Pomona), universities (e.g., UChicago, Harvard, Brown) and predominately tech-oriented schools (HMC, MIT, Caltech) appear.
It would definitely have been the case at my college in the UK (3 out of 39 mathematicians in my year were female!). But many US colleges don’t admit separately for math, and unlike engineering or CS it’s just part of L&S which often is much more than 50% female. So it’s harder to give an admission boost in that situation, unless it is a STEM focused college that gives an overall boost to females.
It varies. To start with, women are not underrepresented in all STEM fields. The % female is all over the map for different majors. For example, biology is often considered the most common STEM major, and ~65% of biology bachelor’s degree recipients in the United States are women. Men are underrepresented in biology – not women. You mentioned math and civil engineering. These are 2 fields in which women are usually underrepresented. Math is usually a little over 40% women, and civil engineering is usually closer to 20% women.
Whether this underrepresentation offers any benefit varies by college. At most colleges, I’d expect there is little to no benefit for being a female in an underrperesnted field. For example, the Harvard lawsuit included a regression analysis that controlled for female + field of study. Specific numbers are below for math and engineering. I compared to humanities as a reference. You’d need a difference of ~0.2 to reach statistical significance. None of these fields reached this threshold for the difference between men and women. The regression analysis may indicate a slight preference for women overall or a slight preference for humanities majors overall, but it does not suggest a larger preference for women in STEM than for women in non-STEM.
Logit estimates of Harvard’s admission decision
Male + Mathematics: -0.11
Female + Mathematics: +0.04
Male + Engineering: +0.13
Female + Engineering: +0.25
Male + Humanities: +0.24
Female +Humanities: +0.41
Selective colleges like Harvard that have open enrollment between majors often try to achieve a good gender balance near 50% male / 50% female across the full college, but rarely try to achieve a good gender balance within specific majors. Harvard usually comes close to this 50/50 balance across the full college, but engineering majors always have a poor gender balance, similar to the ratio one would expect without admission preferences.
However, colleges that do not make it as easy to switch majors may have different policies. For example, Cornell’s school of engineering appears to try to achieve a good gender balance within the school of engineering; rather than just achieving a 50/50 gender balance across the full college. This is reflected in the admit rate. In 2019, the admit rate was 7% for men vs 19% for women. A similar effect can occur at colleges where the bulk of students are engineering + CS majors such as MIT, Caltech, and Harvey Mudd.
Colleges that are not as selective are less likely to offer a significant gender preference since they often do not have as large an oversupply of highly qualified applicants.