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<p>As someone who has worked in admissions at a “higher-caliber program”, it does. </p>
<p>A school with an average SAT score of 1400 isn’t going to admit a person with an 1100 score just because that person is a woman, but their more “forgiving” of being in the bottom half of the SAT range. The problem is that there’s pressure from several groups to increase the number of women in engineering. Since there are less female applicants, the only way to increase the number of women is to be a little more relaxed in admission.</p>
<p>Adcoms aren’t robots - they favor URM, and in engineering schools, that includes women.</p>