The size of these schools are generally small, so a percentage can be squewed by a handful of boys. The majority of athletic post grads spots are for boys. I wouldn’t read into a split unless it was 60/40 or more.
In college - the lack of CS and Engineering at most LACs (a very popular choice for boys) really brings down the boy app pool. Plus, there are just more girls going to college in general.
My non-scientific observations and kiddo’s reporting suggests that girls these days are academically outperforming boys in middle school and high school. Could be wrong, and wouldn’t dig in to defend that position.
I doubt the difference in numbers has anything to do with the quality of the applicant pool. But it does make sense that the larger number of all girls schools impacts the number of girls at co-ed schools.
I also believe girls outperform boys by and large, with the exception of STEM fields maybe but even there they are catching up. The ‘lowering of academic standards’, to the extent it happens, has nothing to do with gender imbalance and everything to do with need to attract enough full paying applicants (ideally some who can write a big check to annual fund on top of tuition) to keep the place running, and afford the upgrades needed to stay competitive. Much like the lower tier colleges, the lower tier boarding schools also sit on much smaller endowment that places like Andover (and Harvard in college world), so cannot afford to be need blind or even close to it. And spending $60K/year+ on run of the mill boarding school (or college for that matter) is a value proposition that only has appeal to limited number of families. Which is why you see a significant increase in international students as this is one applicant pool where there is much higher perceived value in getting secondary education in the US, particularly if the plan is to enroll in college in the US.
It is hard to manage gender ratios since AOs cannot control yield. In other words, they might send acceptance letters to an equal number of boys and girls but end up with different percentages accepting the offer.
Let’s do a thought experiment. Loomis is 56/50. They decide to go down to 50/50. Regardless of whether girls are slightly higher than boys academically on average when applying a 1:1 ratio (which is inapposite to the discussion), getting to 50/50 means admission standards go down. I am frankly surprised there is pushback on this, and can only recommend that the household Math/STEM kid, if there is one, be consulted.
In any event, my reference to “lowering academic standards” is not in the present context. I really wrote my post because 1) I am interested in the data and wanted to share (it has almost no bearing on my son’s applications, but thought some of you folks might have interest) and 2) because I am very interested (intellectually more than anything) in how boarding schools will respond to the demographic crunch, which begins in two years.
Nobody has commented on this demographic crunch, but colleges are all over the issue and it will impact boarding schools four years earlier than colleges. Gender ratios will be part of that response. Maybe only a small part: there’s international student proportions, general lowering of admission standards (by a miniscule amount for top schools and a greater amount down the pecking order; that does not mean students who enroll will be unqualified), general enrollment decline (which will probably occur in most cases), and I am not sure of what else, beyond closings (and some will happen). There will be a smaller pool of available day students to begin with, so I don’t think increasing them will be part of the general toolbox, but it may be in isolated cases. Yes, schools will try to increase demand in all areas, marketing will play a role etc. — but all schools will be doing that, so getting a competitive edge in that respect will be hard.
In other words, “winter is coming.”
@Pincite I work in a college setting and I agree with you that winter is coming. In the northeast we’ve been dealing with a decline in birth rates for the past few admissions cycles. Our regional state schools and lower end schools have taken the hardest hits, as they depend more on local students and do not have the name recognition or reputation to attract more applicants. We are ALL looking ahead to the big dip coming. Many schools, my own included, have been planning ahead to deal with it.
What I find interesting (based on what I have read,) there are less international students coming to the US for college. This does not seem to be the case for BS, who seem to have a lot of international applicants. Maybe this is just supply and demand - hundreds of BS to apply to vs thousands of colleges?
In any case, I agree that the BS community will be quite vulnerable once the dip begins. The highest tier schools will weather it just fine and still have their choice of applicants, I’m sure. But there are many others who could be in danger of closing if they can’t meet their budgets.
I actually have less concern over the male / female ratio and more concern over the international / domestic ratio. I think it is more likely that struggling BSs will fill their beds with full pay international students rather than decrease their standards to make up for a small imbalance in M/F ratios. Some schools already have international populations pushing 40% or more of their total enrollment, and it has a big impact on campus culture.
I still really don’t understand your point. If I tell you that every school my kids applied to rejected applicants with perfect scores and perfect grades where on earth do you get this impression. 1) I don’t really understand your point or your opinion 2) I think you are making assumptions that are incorrect.
If schools want to change the ratio, they can admit some of those perfect scores of either gender. Is your point that boys have better scores and therefore better applications? That seems to be an underlying assumption and again, the pushback comes from those of us who have been in the BS world for several years and that’s not what AOs (whom we often chat with at games or performances) say.
@pincite, here’s where I think the confusion about your position comes from: There are three points where the disparity in gender can possibly come from: who applies, who gets in and who chooses to come. I think you are mostly attributing the difference to who gets in, and I (can’t speak for others) attribute it to who applies (girls schools as competition) and who attends (year to year micro-imbalances in yield). There is no decrease in standards in those two because the kid is the one choosing, not the school.
But yeah, winter is definitely coming. I just don’t see that as a gender thing. International yes.
Over the past decade, St. Paul’s School has been about 50/50. However, another poster in this thread has indicated that it varies by grade.
@one1ofeach I’m sorry that you do not understand; I’ve already tried to explain it twice, and don’t want to get bogged down in it more. Please note that I already stated it is not about boy-girl academic differences. This is not a math thread — but nor is it a matter of opinion.
@CateCAParent Of course the disparity comes from the number of boys and girls who are, respectively, applying, unless you want to assume that coed boarding schools are systematically discriminating against girls — which would be illegal. I made no such point.
@dramakid2 Thanks for your insight and reasoned response!
@pincite - I think your theory is interesting, not trying to put any words in your mouth.
I don’t think it is discrimination, btw, even if they did accept more boys than girls. BS’s could have different yield rates by gender, so they probably adjust their algorithm accordingly to end up with the right number of boys and girls. They also have to tweak year to year if yield one year isn’t exactly right.
@Pincite Without getting bogged down in the math, can I ask (and to be clear, I am asking this as the moderator in lieu of just shutting the thread down) what is the point of this thread then? Because clearly I am not the only one who does not get it.
@Publisher Obviously this varies by grade, which is precisely why it is relatively easy for schools to get the overall gender ratio that they want: the numbers are rounded out over four years. These numbers are a reflection of school policy; they are neither random nor, on a four-year basis, as variable as people are implying.
@CateCAParent I think California schools will weather this crisis much better than New England schools. Part of New England’s larger problem is a stagnant or declining baseline population. So, if I was the betting type (which I am not) and cared about small gradations in rankings (which I do not), I would think that Thacher and Cate will do quite well for themselves, relatively speaking. Maybe they will even have the dubious distinction of getting to be included in a new cc acronym in 10 years!
Thacher and Cate already have smaller acceptance rates than most of the acronym schools 
Quick Q re: the demographic crunch. I understand there will be fewer high-school aged kids applying to college soon. What is the general gender ratio for those younger, less numerous generations coming up?
@skieurope Is there another thread discussing gender ratios for boarding schools and providing these ratios to your readers? I did not see one — and that is the point of this thread (there are plenty of college threads about this, though, so it is clearly not something cc moderators generally frown upon). If there is such a thread for prep school admissions already, my apologies and please link it.
Folks can interpret this data however they want; but I think sharing this information is valuable, and the fact that prep school admissions had no thread with any data or discussion on the issue was a problem. So, I have remedied that there problem. You’re welcome!
I think ski has the same confusion I do. As a data analyst and parent of a kid whose math abilities are off the charts, I don’t understand how gender imbalance relates to lowered admissions standards for boarding schools, and I don’t see how you’ve clarified this at all. Please try again.
Ok, one last time - assuming @skieurope does not want to close the thread. And if he does, geez, I could be playing online chess or something “useful” instead…
People say girls have slightly better scores etc. for boarding school; let’s assume that is true. I said that doesn’t matter. Here’s why:
Let’s think of a very known example: a LAC with a 60:40 ratio. We all know (or should) that boys, in general, have lower admissions standards into these colleges.
But what if that was not the case? What if boys in the larger college applicant population (or liberal arts applicant population) had slightly better scores than girls in my liberal arts hypothetical. (I am not saying this is true — the opposite is probably true — but please bear with me for the sake of understanding.)
That would not matter. Admission standards would still decline if a school went to 50/50 by increasing boys, even if boys in general had better scores etc. as part of the larger population. Why?
For a 60:40 to go to a 50:50, a ton of male applicants would need to be accepted — above and beyond those who would be accepted for a 60/40.
Let’s say 250 boys are accepted to get to that 50, with a 20% yield rate. Let’s say 200 were accepted before, to get to 40 (actually the number would be lower because the yield rate would be higher, but for the sake of this example).
Those 50 boys who were accepted and previously were declined are what is relevant for this comparison, not the “average” boy (who is slightly higher than the average girl).
Now let’s look at the girls. 300 used to be accepted before; now only 250 are being accepted.
Time to compare the numbers. The comparison is not between average boys and average girls but between these nth numbers of boys and girls. How do the 50 (lower) boys who were accepted compare to the 50 girls who used to be accepted but no longer are? This subset of boys will be lower than that subset of girls, and admission standards will be generally lower as a result.
How do I know they will be lower in this LAC hypothetical? Because disproportionately more girls apply: the 60/40 could easily be 70/30 if just going by the numbers; that’s how disproportionate things are. The 30-40th percentile of female applicants will be way higher than the 20% of boys they are admitting, even if boys in general have average scores (I am just throwing those percentages out there; the difference is probably even greater if you, as a data analysts, ever get a hold of a real data set).
Nobody wants a 60:40. And no boarding school wants a 56:44.
We already heard from someone on this thread that Kent recognizes 56:44 to be a problem. So why don’t they simply admit more girls if average girls are higher? The answer is simply because they can’t — admission standards would drop. Instead they are trying to increase demand for female applicants.
Another point: do you think of every 100 applicants, that 56 at Kent are boys? I can assure you the number is higher than that. My above hypothetical assumed this was a constant to make the point, but in reality boys 200-250 might be of, say, 550 applicants vs. rejected girls 250-300 from an applicant pool of 900. Surely you could see then how admissions standards would decline.
The effect for a 52:48 is much smaller. But the point remains. There, the drop in admission standards moving to 50/50 would barely be noticeable, but it would exist. Enter the demographic crunch in a couple years. If I were a 50/50 school with a disproportion of applicants of one gender, and I could go to 52:48 and only slightly increase the international proportion and maybe slightly increase enrollment, I would. But Hotchkiss will not want to go to from 53:47 to 55:55; they will be more constrained. We shall see…
Objection, counsel (guessing you are an attorney from your name @pincite), improper hypothetical.
I am not going to dispute the details of what you have constructed in your illustration, even though I think that it is problematic because the small size of boarding schools make randomness a bigger culprit than you give it credit. It is just that the gender-based forces on admissions, if they exist, are dwarfed by the bigger forces at play, such as the changing demographics we have been discussing. I don’t understand the basis of your assumption that the decreasing pool of applicants would impact one gender more than another. Is that your assumption?
I don’t think anyone would quarrel with the notion that colleges and high schools lower on the food chain are going to have to change admissions policies as the size of the applicant pool shrinks.
The biggest issue I have with the argument is that in the BS world, those nth next percentage of newly accepted students (in your example, those boys), can easily have equally solid academic credentials as those that they replaced. Remember all the AOs who say they could fill the classes with 99%/4.0 kids. The nth percentile wouldn’t exhaust the supply down to taking kids below their averages.
(Now whether that makes them have lower overall standards — read non-academically defined standards — is a different matter but I don’t think that you are talking about that.)
I was trying to be tactful. I understand what you have written, it is simply not as logical as you believe it to be. In fact your logic is sorely flawed.
If your only point is that BSs, especially the less well known ones, are going to experience a crunch time when there are fewer kids applying then sure, I will grant that is probably true.
The rest, with the ratio of boys to girls and the lowering of academic standards is complete hooey, at least for the schools I am familiar with. For #50-100 that might be true but that’s not the schools near me so I don’t know much about them.
Additionally I went through the student directories that I have access to and for both schools your numbers are wrong.