<p>At most colleges, women are given a favorable factor as an under-represented minority for admission to engineering. Thus, it helps. How much is debatable. For example, I recall one admission officer from MIT once noting that it was like having an extra 20 points on your SAT but since the average SAT score for MIT is somewhere in the 2300 range, you can see how having 20 extra points doesn’t mean the favorable factor is a big thing. </p>
<p>Universally, women are a minority in the engineering programs at colleges, often less than 20%, except Chemical/biologic engineering fields are generally higher and often 30-40% even when at the same school the total may be under 20%.</p>