gravenewworld said:
has anyone on the this board even been in the class room recently? girls are much more encouraged to do well in science and math and in academics in general than their male counterparts. At my school the majority of math and chemistry majors are female, by almost 2:1. Look at ANY research experience for undergraduate (REUs) program and they ALL say that they highly encourage and prefer female applicants. I applied for the same REU programs as this girl who is in my class and is also a math major and got rejected by all, yet she was able to get accepted to more than one. Some way she was able to get into the programs even though I still had taken 5 more advanced math courses than her and have gotten all A's in every math class I have taken. Even Grad school programs all say the same thing-WOMEN AND MINORITY APPLICANTS ARE STRONGLY ENCOURAGED TO APPLY. Why should I be held to a higher standard than a female or a minority just because I am a white male? This day in age white males have to perform 2x's better than a woman or a minority just to get that job or get that school acceptance because of reverse discrimination.
They all say "WOMEN AND MINORITY APPLICANTS ARE STRONGLY ENCOURAGED TO APPLY" because they legally are required to include that because of equal opportunity employment laws. Most position announcements are drafted, then have to get sent through the EOE/affirmative action office, and someone there tacks it onto anything it hasn't already been included in.
I'm glad to hear that at your institution, there is a high ratio of women in the classroom; sounds like they are doing something right. I think biology has made huge strides in this regard as well, and it's probably improving even more now that the people who grew up in a culture where sexism was not only tolerated but the norm are not being asked to teach anymore, so the younger women are not being exposed to them quite so early. But, outside of the biology and chemistry classes (because the biology majors need to take chemistry as well as Calc I&II), in general, the numbers dwindle. I attended a women's college, so just having a women's college at the university helped keep the ratios of women higher in the classes.
However, on a single case basis of one woman getting accepted to programs that one man was not accepted to, that's not much to judge by. Actually, it's worth it for you to go back to those programs to which you applied and ask why you were not accepted into the program. Sometimes experience outside of grades is important, such as how one conducts themself in an interview, or the impact of an essay in the application.
I do interview students for our graduate program. Beyond that statement that we encourage women and minorities to apply, I evaluate each person on their own merits once their applications have arrived and those who will receive interviews are selected. On the interview, I can dig past the grades and find out if the applicant really knows what they're getting into with grad school, how much effort have they put into choosing the schools they've applied to, do their interests fit with the faculty we have, and do they really have an understanding of science and that spark of curiosity one needs to have. Some come in with top notch grades and top notch GREs, but cannot demonstrate they have a true interest in research or have even given that part of grad school much thought. I've also run into the situation of an extremely qualified applicant, who was incredibly interested in a research topic for which we had no faculty who could mentor them, and upon questioning how flexible they were about that topic, would they consider other somewhat related areas, etc., learned that really they were approaching grad school with a very narrow focus, so I couldn't recommend them for acceptance; it just wouldn't have made sense for them to join a program where they couldn't learn what they wanted to learn.
So, just because one woman got a position you didn't, don't belittle her ability by saying she got it just because she's a woman. There's a lot more to hiring people into research than grades alone. And there are reasons aside from grades and scores that get applications rejected. My advice to you is to ask why you were passed over for the positions. It's useful to know if there's a weak area on your application or in an interview skill or something like that which you need to strengthen before you start applying for grad school or jobs. It's also possible that you were too advanced for the experiences you were both applying for. Sometimes those programs are geared toward students at certain levels of their undergraduate career, and someone who has passed that point isn't considered.
I have a friend who works as an actuary that ran into such a problem in her career. She passed all her actuarial exams at a ridiculously rapid pace (apparently a lot of people need to take them two or three times before they pass each one, or space them out every year or two; she passed most on the first sitting and just took them every time there was a sitting). What happened is the company she was working for closed, and she had to find a new job. She was over-qualified for the lower level positions comparable to the one she was in because of the number of exams she had passed (in their field, you typically get raises with each exam passed, so more exams means you're more expensive), and under-qualified for the upper level management positions because she hadn't been in her previous job long enough to advance up and get the management experience. This made it very difficult for her to get a job despite clearly having the aptitude for the work and achieving so much so quickly in passing the exams. In the end, she had to take a major paycut in order to get a lower level job in a place willing to then get her the management training she needed to catch up to her exam level. This had nothing to do with her being a woman or anything like that, just an example of why one set of qualifications isn't always enough to determine why one person gets a job that another doesn't.
We all know grad school, post-docs and academic careers in general are very stressful for everyone. If anyone wonders about this, just take a look at Humanino's recent posts. He sounds like he's near to having a break-down. I'd be hard pressed to find someone who didn't go through this experience at some point during grad school. When you're hitting that wall, almost any extra pressure can be the difference between toughing it out and saying "who needs this?" and packing it all up. Having to spend extra time defending yourself against sexism can be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back.
