Interesting point about percentages of women in engineering at various colleges. The first article about maker spaces mentions Wellesley. However, I haven’t heard Wellesley come up often (if at all) as a recommended engineering college for women, or any other women’s college, for that matter. Is Wellesley, or any other women’s college, a viable and competitive choice for a female future engineer? Or are those colleges too limiting in terms of their offerings?
Wellesley doesn’t have an engineering major. You can find details about their offerings and relationship with MIT and Olin here:
I was not aware that Wellesley had engineering at all. They certainly didn’t when D1 was applying (FWIW she almost went there). I recall the students can take courses at MIT, and they are only a few miles from Olin. If they’ve developed some sort of major in coordination with these two I would at least look into it. Wellesley is a great school.
But not an easy admit for most.
Smith does have an engineering major. I haven’t looked but I imagine the offerings have got to be pretty limited.
re: that article, I don’t recall Brandeis or Williams offering engineering either.
Except as part of a 3-2 program with a school that actually really has engineering.
re #24, if “conservative student body” is to be avoided, screening could , at first blush, emphasize West coast, Northeast, blue states.
But FWIW it has been my experience that engineers as a group may tend to be more conservative than the overall campus. That was certainly my impression, both in school but yet moreso in engineering practice.
As an extreme example, during some rather well-publicized civil rights and SDS protests at my school in the late 60s, a group of engineering students mounted a counter-protest. Granted that was a long time ago.
But maybe that’s something OPs daughter wants to explore, while she is screening. If that’s possible.
Wellesley offers engineering classes, but not an engineering degree. They do have dual degree programs with both Olin and MIT (3-4 students a year do a full dual degree, and another 2-3 get an engineering cert from Olin). They have a pretty strong engineering society. as well.
https://www.asee.org/papers-and-publications/publications/college-profiles/15EngineeringbytheNumbersPart1.pdf from 2015 lists the following on page 14:
Number Percent Demographic
610461 100.0 All undergraduate engineering students
130767 21.4 Female
47099 7.7 Female, Hispanic + American Indian + Asian American + Black or Afr. American + Hawaiin / Pac. Islander + Two or More
Thanks for the data, @ucbalumnus. I think the breakout of Asian American women would be also be relevant- I know the % of Black women hovers around 1, and that Hispanic is less than that.
No doubt engineering students tend to be more conservative in personal behavior, since the academics do not leave as much room for wild partying, recreational drug use, etc…
However, political conservatism is not necessarily the same as personal behavior conservatism. Engineering student demographics (much more male, somewhat fewer racial/ethnic minorities) may suggest being more conservative than students in general, but the college student age demographic tends to be less conservative than adults in general. Obviously, specific colleges’ demographics could be very different, affecting the political leanings. Several years ago, I went to an engineering graduation at a university; the graduates were overwhelmingly racial/ethnic minorities (even more so than the university’s undergraduates as a whole, who were majority-minority), so I would not expect a lot of political conservatism there, especially now that political conservatism/liberalism is more strongly tied to racial/ethnic issues.
Here are more groupings:
Number Percent Demographic
610461 100.0 All undergraduate engineering students
130767 21.4 Female
47099 7.7 Female, Hispanic + American Indian + Asian American + Black or Afr. American + Hawaiin / Pac. Islander + Two or More
28049 4.6 Female, Hispanic + American Indian + Black or Afr. American + Hawaiin / Pac. Islander + Two or More
19050 3.1 Female, Asian American
15066 2.5 Female, Hispanic
7155 1.2 Female, Black or Afr. American
4762 0.78 Female, Two or More
532 0.087 Female, American Indian
234 0.038 Female, Hawaiian/Pac. Islander
Surprising to see such low numbers for Asian American women. I don’t think I mentioned, but she’s half Japanese, half Caucasian.
@monydad Politically, she’s left of center compared to the rest of the country, but she’s probably right in the middle of her age group here in the PNW. She actually doesn’t care too much about politics per se. I think a lot of people of her generation equate conservatism with Trumpism.
That doesn’t sound offbeat at all. I hear nothing but great things about GA Tech.
@PikachuRocks15 Good point about NMSF status. She’s been so focused on the ACT that she hasn’t really had much time to look at the PSAT. She’ll have to get on that.
And great point about Brown. It may be worth adding to the already crowded reach list. It was my dream school back in the day, but my daughter’s very different from me!
I am also surprised at the % for Asian, and happy to be wrong about the % of Hispanic women (noting that it is still way too small a # obvs- it’s just not as bad as I had thought).
Clearly, colleges like MIT must value the liberal arts more than Brown, otherwise they wouldn’t have such requirements… 
If she is concerned about race relations, note that some “blue states” or regions may be left-leaning for various reasons, but have less than praiseworthy race relations. Chicago is one example, with politics that lean left on many issues but is widely seen as one of the most racially segregated cities in the US.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-most-diverse-cities-are-often-the-most-segregated/ is an older article about racial segregation, with a table at the bottom listing cities by an integration/segregation index. Chicago was the most segregated of the listed cities by this measure.
I don’t think she’s that concerned about race relations per se. (As I said, she’s not that interested in politics. She supports BLM but isn’t out protesting in the streets or talking about it on social media or anything.) I think those stats would be relevant on wrt her chances of getting in. I assumed that being Asian would negatively impact her chances of admission to top engineering programs, but perhaps it might not be as bad as I thought.
I do think she might be a bit more concerned about gender imbalance. She took an engineering elective and AP Comp Sci at her school, and she expressed frustration that the boys often ignored her input on group projects (especially in the engineering elective). I told her she should grab one of them by the shoulders, look them in the eye, and say, “Look. I’m better at this than you.” She declined my suggestion. Not her style, I guess. 
She prefers working on things alone since she doesn’t have to convince other people of the merits of her ideas–she can just do them on her own. Over time I think she knows she’ll need to get past this and learn how to work as part of a team. I personally think she’d be able to accomplish this better at a school that doesn’t have a very strong gender imbalance.
@dla26 You should also look at the gender balance of the professors teaching classes at the schools on your daughters list. Our S has, IMO, benefited greatly from having taken classes taught by women (some leaders in their field). For female students I would think that would be a benefit as well.
Excellent point!
re#55:
There are two potentially relevant M-F ratios: the university as a whole, and the engineering college in particular. For the in-class experience OP might focus more on engineering-only, but in my experience university-wide was most relevant socially.
The university-wide stats will certainly be available. I assume the engineering college/program only stats are mostly available, but maybe not always.
In a pinch, the asee.org profiles, per the link in post # 14, have some engineering-specific gender breakdowns. For one, “degrees by ethnicity and gender” at least gives breakdowns by degrees. Perhaps not in the most convenient format, but the data is there if you don’t mind doing some arithmetic.
The asee.org link in #45 gives numbers but I don’t see the data to compute proportions at first glance. (But I just glanced at it to be honest). It does have that data for professors though.
I would like to correct my post #14, because I gave the wrong impression.
I went to such a college, and it wasn’t like people overtly felt competitive with each other. We studied together; nobody was stealing people’s lab reports or anything.
At the lower level curved intro courses, the feeling was we were all fighting the curve, not each other.
What I meant in #14 was, if you took it a step back, the curve was what it was, and the courses were taught at the levels that they were, because the student group as a whole consisted of all these smart and motivated individuals who were all trying to do well.
But in practice people I knew were not focusing on that step back, or conducting themselves in an overtly competitive fashion. They were trying to do well, and it felt challenging to do that. But the challenge was focused on mastering the subject, not outdoing each other.
And FWIW there were plenty of group projects, group labs, etc.
OP D’s current school could well feel more competitive than a lot of these engineering schools feel. The schools may be harder but mostly because the subject is hard and the standards are high. If that’s the intellectual group where your D truly best belongs, I would not necessarily eliminate them without investigating the nature of the “competitive” situation there first. That aspect may not be something she need fear, in many if not most cases.