Hi! I just wanted to follow up on this comment you made back in Dec 2024. My D has added RIT to her list, as some of her friends are applying and one close friend is very excited about RIT. My D is attracted by the selection of majors and programs, and also likes the idea of being at the same institution as the NTID since she is interested in sound perception and deafness.
So my question is, what about RIT would not be a good fit? We have not visited; she has only visited schools in Oregon and northern CA, and won’t be visiting schools outside of the W coast until after acceptances are in, because it takes so long to travel east.
I don’t think RIT would not be a good fit, just that WPI would give her more academic flexibility. RIT admits by major, while WPI admits to the school, so there is a lot of flexibility in how you combine classes or to create your own major. Plus, the trimester system gives you a few more classes and the ability to try a class for “no record”. There’s easy access to hospitals and it’s definitely a D&D crowd.
D is considering applying to WPI in the EA1 round, and has added it to her common app. We are wondering how gender balance is evolving at WPI. I seem to remember reading somewhere on CC that WPI had made an effort to specifically recruit more women in the past (with additional merit?) but ended that practice, and recent incoming classes have had fewer women? Paging @vwlizard (you seem to know a lot about WPI) and @OctoberKate (you have a senior there I think?)
WPI used to give great merit to women, but the funding for those scholarships ran out, so now the merit offers are more balanced. Unfortunately, it looks like the classes have gone back to being less balanced according to the CDS (approximately 2.5:1). I’m disappointed, as I know so many impressive alumnae who attended specifically because of those scholarships.
Yep, @vwlizard is right. The person who donated the $$ for the extra scholarships to women apparently died and didn’t include it in their will, so those went away.
When my son, now a senior, was applying it was more like 55-45 male-female, and each class since then has been getting more skewed male. That said, I do think the school does a good job of supporting its women, there are your typical women in engineering groups, women’s club sports and sororities for those interested in single gender activities, and there are a good number of female faculty. If I had a daughter I might be worried about a predominantly male school feeling like it was bro-culture somehow, or like my daughter would be stifled or uncomfortable, and I don’t think the school feels like that at all.
I don’t think it’s that bad yet, but definitely moving up, more rapidly than I would’ve expected. I know the school is aware of it, and I have to imagine they are trying to combat it.
If it were my daughter, I’d probably say that I think it’s fine to apply and to consider this a data point. And then after getting accepted to visit if feasible and see how it feels on campus and to ask some hard questions about what the school is doing to encourage more women to attend or to feel comfortable or whatever concerns she might have.
I forgot to mention this earlier, but in thinking about campus vibe I also should’ve maybe noted how LGBTQ friendly the campus is (for example, my son’s fraternity has a trans brother, and no one thinks it’s weird.). Not that your kid is in that group, but it’s a very different vibe than a “boys club” kind of thing that one might assume from a male dominated campus.
Well, my son’s friends are dating women at a wide variety of colleges within a 30 minute drive or T ride, so there is definitely dating outside of school
(Although I won’t lie, I also wish there were a larger dating pool of women at WPI, I think my kid has been bummed to not really date while there. I think the closest he’s gotten to dating was a woman at Wellesley that his roommate’s girlfriend set him up with that he saw a few times, but it didn’t really click.)
When my daughter went to Florida Tech, I think it was about 27% female, and of course a lot of male professors too. For her, the dating pool being 3x as large was just fine!
She only complained once, and that was that in Intro to engineering, her two project partners were male (most groups had only 1 or no females) and she didn’t like the two guys. She was small and shy and had to learn to stand up for herself. She did.
She was on a sports team and in a sorority, so did have female friends.
The number of female engineers at her job is probably about the same ratio. It takes a long time for the ratio to change at schools and then trickle into the work place. ‘Back in my day…’ there were only about 10% women in engineering, and boy were they strong engineers and great workers.
