St. Louis University
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Maybe this helps - thereâs a map on the bottom with links to some of the chapters you could reach out to.
Ultimately your record will determine what schools youâre even able to attend.
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The all-female Douglass Residential College at Rutgers might be of interest, as it provides both residential community and specific programming and support for women in STEM.
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Purdue also has a women in engineering living learning community: Learning Communities - Women in Engineering
UMD as well: Flexus | A. James Clark School of Engineering, University of Maryland
RPI has a women in STEM house: Women in STEM House | Student Living and Learning
Iâm sure other schools have similar programs but these are the ones Iâm familiar with and remember from our tours.
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Yes, quite a few schools have LLCâs for women in STEM. Douglass is unusual in that its lineage goes back to the New Jersey College for Women (founded in 1918), which later became Douglass College, and remained a separate, degree-granting womenâs college until it fully merged with the other undergraduate colleges of Rutgers in 2007, retaining the residential community. So thereâs a lot of history and momentum there. Iâm not specifically familiar with others (other than the womenâs living groups at MIT, but those are STEM-focused only insofar as the entire school is) but they definitely merit a closer look as well.
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My daughter went to Florida Tech, and it was definitely male heavy (and foreign student heavy). She definitely felt it when she had to work on group projects (usually 2 male students and her assigned to a group). She was in civil engineering at a school very heavily mechanical/aero/computer engineering.
She was very young and intimidated at first. She learned to stand her ground. The first project she was on one of the guys yelled at her for doing something without him âbecause he was sick and would get to it.â Well, she didnât have time to wait for him to do things at the last minute as she was an athlete and often had to get things done earlier than when due, especially at the last minute, as she might have to travel on the weekend.
She got a lot of support from her teammates, SWE, and her sorority sisters. She needed to find other areas of support as support didnât always come from male classmates (although sometimes it did). As an athlete, she was required to attend study tables and she found support with other athletes (a soccer player missed Calc every Wed and she worked with him on what was missed and found she learned a lot in tutoring him).
One of her sorority sisters was a superstar. President of sorority, of Mechanical engineers, on the jet car team. Received 4 full scholarships for her masters from GA Tech, Columbia, Florida tech and one other school (went to Columbia). Is currently super successful in what she does. Sheâs stepped on quite a few toes to get ahead and stay there.
If you go to a tech school, there are often more men than women (still). If you go to a large university, there are often more women overall than men, but still may be fewer women in engineering. You may find more support from other women on campus in groups that you join (sorority, hiking club, dance club, sports). You have to build your world.
As others above have said, youâll still find more men in engineer (after college) overall than women as there were more men graduating in the past 30 years and it will take a while for that to even out. My daughter works for a large engineering consulting firm and she was the only woman in her group for the past 7 years but now has 2 women working directly for her. She works twice as hard as the men in her group. All of the people she reports to, directly or indirectly, are men. Sheâs come a long way in advocating for herself but IMO they take advantage of her.
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In some ways, this sounds like great training for the real world !!
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According to ASEE, 24.6% of engineering degrees were awarded to women in 2023, which is the most recent year for which they provide data.
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And the issue is it shouldnât be. Why, in 2025, should women have to work twice as hard? When she brought it up with a supervisor, she was told âhe has a familyâ. Again, 2025.
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It shouldnât but reality is reality.
Not saying students shouldnât find a school that is supportive of all, and the same at work but just noting what many face in reality.
Iâm in a male dominated field - internally and externally - but I almost always see cross gender respect. Almost - not always. And itâs typically older people (that I see) that are disrespectful when I do witness disrespect.
In Auto News the other day, I was reading about a Dodge dealer fined by the EEOC for gender discrimination. They didnât want females in leadership or even sales because they create âdramaâ - not my word but in the lawsuit. I looked on their website to see the current sales staff. Not a woman listed. Coincidence or purposeful?
It shouldnât be but I was just noting that the student at Florida Tech is likely prepared for whatever she encounters in life
Doesnât make it right but in some instances, even in 2025, itâs a reality.
Just went through the application cycle with my daughter for aerospace engineering. Many of the schools mentioned here were on her list to consider and we investigated the approaches to women in engineering as one of her top priorities. The domino effect of gender parity (or lack thereof) blew us awayâŠtoo much to get into within the scope of this post. But we learned so much last year about how important this issue is!
It was no surprise that her first choice ended up being Viterbi (USC) given they are one of only two schools that made gender parity a top priority. And wow you feel that when you go on campus and see the students and talk to the faculty. She is headed there in a week to move in so I am of course now a biased opinion.
A resource that was helpful was various engineering program podcasts, especially ones that talked about women in engineering. (Ps one thing that is interesting that we didnât know before last year is that biomedical engineering typically attracts more female than male students so note that a schools overall gender ratio will likely be skewed if the school has a robust Biomedical engineering major.)
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Viterbi (USC) given that they are one of only two schools that made gender parity a top priority
Whatâs the other one?
Chemical and environmental engineering also skew more women.
Thank you everyone for the tips and great discussion. We will look into the sources provided.
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CMU.
And to be more precise I will say âof the schools she considered and based on her experiences in researching schools.â Clearly, we havenât visited or investigated every single school out there. :). But I do feel like she did robust investigation and while many (most? all?) had special support and/or programming/clubs for women, seeking actual program parity was very rare.
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Thanks. 
Harvey Mudd College achieved gender parity and has maintained parity since 2014.
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WPI, RPI, RIT are not very âbroâ hyper-masculine places from my observation (w/ 2 kids looking at engineering programs - I know students at all 3, too). RIT doesnât have pure aerospace, I think it is a specialization under mechanical, but does have an active rocketry team and some other related ECs.
CO has a big aerospace industry, not sure about women in the programs but UC Boulder and Mines might be of interest - I would think Boulderâs deeply progressive vibe might make it welcoming ?
Excellent point. Thanks for adding. We only considered schools with aerospace engineering majors.
Mines is more a petroleum engineering school and Boulder the aerospace focused school. Mines does have mechanical engineering.
And while there are a lot of Californians in Boulder, it is not a UC, it is CU-Boulder
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