Noticed gender difference in common data sets transfer/not

confidentialq
Sun, 12 Apr 2026 14:55:59 +0000

Hi all. I am an incoming freshman that has started looking at transfer options for sophomore year. I am also nonbinary. I was looking through the common data sets of most of the top20 schools and noticed that there is a very low amount of “other gender” applicants and then acceptees…I understand that gender nonconforming/trans people are the minority, but it sometimes feels a little excessive?

For example, Cornell has 0 “other gender” students out of their entire class of 26,793 people (from the 2024-2025 reports). From transferring applicants, only 8 applied and 0 got in—which makes sense, since it’s a low amount of applicants from that group, but isn’t having 0 “other gender” students be accepted in the last 4 years a little weird? Same thing for Brown, who has 0 “other gender” students enrolled and only had 3 of them apply as transfers.

It’s around the same for other schools, though most have an average of like 30 enrolled “other gender” students out of a whopping 15-30k students.

I dunno if this should even be a post, I’m just wondering if it’s a literal gender bias or if they just don’t get enough applicants. And I guess I also have a question - do schools contrast your application in a general group of applicants, or is it sectioned by gender like with the common data set? Just wondering. Thanks.