I have begun the search for colleges for my younger son, who is interested in engineering. He is a high achiever, so I thought of a trip to Cornell. Although we loved the school and felt welcome, I am concerned by what I have been reading online regarding the open discrimination against men. I have discovered that a Title IX complaint has been filed against the school. Honestly wondering if pursuing admission is even a wise idea. Any current students out there that can shed some light on what is really going on?
https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=11853
http://www.aei.org/publication/will-2019-be-the-year-that-colleges-and-universities-stop-openly-discriminating-against-male-students-47-years-after-title-ix/
Based on my conversations with colleagues (mostly in the business school) and students (mostly in the engineering school) and a handful of friends with students in LAS and one in the Hotel school, there is no “open discrimination” against men at Cornell. Based on a cursory reading of the law suit the main complaint seems to be that there are a number of school sponsored centers for women without an analogue for men.
One of those centers that I am familiar with is the Women in Physics group, which is an informal group affiliated with the national Women in Physics group, which is a working group of the APS. Their main activity is holding get-togethers for women physics students, starting at the undergraduate level. Given that purpose is to encourage young women as they move into a field in which they will be very much in the minority for their working lifetimes (women still only represent about 20% of physics degrees across all levels), it doesn’t feel discriminatory that such a group - run by and for the young women themselves, not by the school- exists… As the mother of a physics daughter I know that the WiP events she went to (not at Cornell- there are branches at most colleges and universities) were a helpful place to find peers, and hearing from women who were successfully building careers in physics was useful
As for this lawsuit itself, I think that Cornell (like Yale, the other university that this group has already sued) is no better/worse than any other college or university. I would imagine that they would be choosing high profile schools to make their point. If the sort of specific forms of ‘discrimination’ outlined in the suit are deal-breakers for you, I urge you to do your own checking of any of the other universities that you / your son are considering. You may find that your options dwindle quickly.
My son was accepted for 2023 Engineering. Cornell accepts between 6-7% of the men and about 14-15% of the woman get accepted. I was very happy about the program when I visited on their accepted student day. Unlike MIT which is much more sink or swim, Cornell has several optional companion peer classes to go with the difficult calculus classes and engineering classes, they have project teams they encourage freshman to get involved, and they accept AP credits so if you have a good deal of AP credits you move up quickly and graduate in 3 1/2 years. They are much more interested in seeing you succeed once you get there then many of the other top rated engineering colleges I visited. If you go for ratings Cornell is rated as the best engineering program in the IVY. In the grand scheme of it, it is better then Harvard/Princeton/Yale engineering. Some schools are more 5 year which you could graduate with your Masters degree by the time you got a engineer degree at the other schools.
Last year the numbers for Cornell overall were 9% for men, 12% for women. For engineering the %s were 6 & 18%- but in absolute numbers, equal #s of M & W were accepted. The difference is that 3x as many men applied as women. You see this sort of skewing wherever schools are trying to achieve gender parity (it frequently runs to the favor of men at Liberal Arts Colleges, where women applicants substantially outnumber men). MIT has addressed this challenge directly, pointing out that the higher acceptance rate for women does not reflect lesser qualifications, just different sizes of applicant pools.
Cornell Engineering is no different than any other engineering college across the US. Almost all schools we visited have active SWE chapters and tutoring. And for the record, they will tutor and support all students, regardless of gender.
Frankly I’m thrilled that the supports are in place to help support women when they have been so underrepresented in the field.