It’s not bad at all – except for one thing. The 54-46 ratio refers to the students who enrolled. The original comment refers to the students who applied.
If we look at the MIT applicant pool for Fall 2015, there was a 70-30 split (12,750 male vs. 5,556 female). It seems fair to call that “a significant shortage of female applicants”.
So how did MIT go from a 70-30 applicant pool to a 54-46 enrolled class? Answer: MIT accepted women at a higher rate. The acceptance rates were 6% for men vs. 13% for women. Obviously both rates are low in absolute terms, but in relative terms, the acceptance rate for women was more than twice as high.
And that’s the point – some schools have a significant gender imbalance in their applicant pools, so they tilt the admission rates one way or the other, to bring the enrolled class closer to a 50/50 mix. At LACs, this typically means better odds for men; at tech schools, it typically means better odds for women.
Just because some schools get more female applicants doesn’t necessarily mean that males have a higher chance of getting in. Some institutions are perfectly fine with an imbalanced male/female ratio. Check each school’s Common Data Set to verify whether the acceptance rate for males is higher than it is for females.
@corbett "So how did MIT go from a 70-30 applicant pool to a 54-46 enrolled class? Answer: MIT accepted women at a higher rate. The acceptance rates were 6% for men vs. 13% for women. Obviously both rates are low in absolute terms, but in relative terms, the acceptance rate for women was more than twice as high.
And that’s the point – some schools have a significant gender imbalance in their applicant pools, so they tilt the admission rates one way or the other, to bring the enrolled class closer to a 50/50 mix. At LACs, this typically means better odds for men; at tech schools, it typically means better odds for women."
Specifically in cases like MIT, it is more complicated than just deciding to accept women at a higher rate. Many women are reluctant to apply to MIT. I think you will find that women are more hesitant to apply to MIT because of the reputation for being all consuming. I suspect that this leads to female applicants who are fewer, but the women who do apply have strong qualifications. That may contribute to the disparity o acceptance rates.
Let’s start with the basics. MIT admitted:
6.12% of men who applied and 13.30% of women who applied
Of the men who were accepted, 75.39% chose to attend MIT.
Of the women accepted, 69.96% chose to attend.
The split isn’t ONLY in terms of people accepted, but also in terms of those who chose to attend.
Overall, 4.61% of male applicants chose to attend and 9.31% of women chose to attend (when compared to amount who applied).
I think this ties into @Much2learn 's point about women being scared to apply to STEM-heavy colleges. So the ones who apply are the ones who really want to go there.
Depending on what you use as the denominator, you can end up with totally different ratios that can lead to totally different analysis haha.