I’m going to post more excerpts from “Kicking Butt…” that provide more insight:
The vision of Carnegie Mellon is to “meet the changing needs of society by building on its traditions of innovation, problem solving, and interdisciplinarity.” Diversity and inclusion are core-values to the university and diversity at the institutional level has been an evolving process. As former Carnegie Mellon President Jared L. Cohon shared in the Statement on Diversity: “In the classroom, studio, laboratory, office and residence hall, a multitude of experiences, perspectives and beliefs will enrich all that we do.”
…
Raj Reddy asked the Office of Undergraduate Admissions to develop criteria that would select for future leaders and visionaries in the field. One subsequent criterion gave value to “evidence of giving back to the community.” Carnegie Mellon adopted this broadened admissions policy, emphasizing diverse interests along with high achievement in mathematics and science (high SAT scores were still required) and de-emphasizing prior programming experience. According to the Director of Carnegie Mellon’s Admissions Office, the admissions criteria has continued to focus on the “student as a whole,” looking for such things as community service and indications of leadership potential, while all the time keeping high SAT scores as a primary criteria. In many cultures, including the United States, women are often the ones who are encouraged to “give back to the community.” Given this perspective we might well argue that the admissions criteria were somewhat biased towards admitting more women—and indeed this is what happened in 1999.
…
These interventions opened the doors to a dramatic increase in the numbers of women in the CS major (as mentioned earlier, from 8% in 1995, to 37% in 1999, to 39.5% in 2000). After brief declines ollowing the dot-com bust when all applications to CS programs dropped nationwide the enrollment of women at Carnegie Mellon has been fairly steady over the past few years, representing 29%, 34% and a projected 32%, of the 2012, 2013 and 2015 first year classes respectively, and an unprecedented 40% in 2014. Carnegie Mellon went from being among the schools with the lowest percentage of undergraduate women in CS in the United States to one of the universities with the highest percentage. Furthermore, it subsequently succeeded in building a culture and environment that allowed for a good Women-CS fit. What’s more the School of Computer Science succeeds in sustaining and graduating a very high proportion of the students who enter as first year CS majors. Indeed, the persistence rate for men and women is almost identical. According to data from Carnegie Mellon’s Office of Institutional Research and Analysis, in the last four cohorts that completed six years, the average graduation rate was 89% with no difference between the rates for men and for women.