10 Best Colleges Where Being a Man Gives You an Admissions Edge
Colleges like to say that admissions isn’t a science but an art.
Though admissions officers rely heavily on hard numbers like test scores, class rank, and grade point averages, they also look at other factors, such as academic interests, high school achievements, geography, and socioeconomic status, to try to build a well-balanced class of freshman each year.
For many schools, that includes your gender.
Most colleges aim to maintain as much gender parity on campus as possible, as the ratio of men to women can dramatically affect campus culture. But that also means some colleges have significantly higher acceptance rates for men than for women, or vice versa.
At schools with a strong engineering or hard science bent, men generally apply in much larger numbers than women, for example.
And colleges that went co-ed in recent decades, after spending most of their history as men's or women's schools, may have trouble shaking their old image.
Sometimes, it’s simple demographics. There are more qualified women than men applying to and attending four-year colleges. In fact, women have outnumbered men in college for more than 30 years now.
Admissions officers are quick to qualify the disparate admissions rates by saying that the men and women who are admitted are equally qualified. And that’s no doubt true at more selective colleges, where several qualified applicants are turned down for every one that’s admitted.
“We are not choosing among qualified and unqualified candidates,” says Thyra L. Briggs, vice president for admission and financial aid at Harvey Mudd College, where women are admitted 2.5 times as often as men. The college, which only offers majors in science, technology, engineering, and math fields, estimates that about 70% of applicants would be strong students there.
At the uber-competitive Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the acceptance rate for women is twice as high as it is for men. But “it’s a false assertion that it is easier to be admitted if you are a woman,” Dean of Admissions Stuart Schmill told us in an email. As evidence that accepted women are no less qualified than the men who get in, Schmill points out that once they’re on campus, women have a higher graduation rate.
Still, students should know if the schools they're applying to swing one way or the other, says Joan Koven, an independent college consultant in Pennsylvania. Koven says she frequently talks with her students about recognizing an institution's needs, including whether the college needs more men or women on campus.
An applicant has to pass the academic bar before any other factors are considered, Koven says. But strictly looking at the numbers, the odds are absolutely in your favor if you’re a woman applying to CalTech or a man applying to Vassar, for example.
"Gender is just another card to play in terms of putting together a well-balanced list," she says.
These are the 10 highest ranked schools in Money's Best Colleges where men are admitted at a higher rate than women. They're ordered based on the proportional size of the gap, from smallest to largest. We reached out to each college on the list, and you'll fill explanations from those that responded.
See our related list of colleges where women are admitted at a higher rate than men.
10. Kettering University
Kettering University
Flint, Mich.
Money Best Colleges rank: 556
Overall acceptance rate: 61.6%
Female rate: 49.7%
Male rate: 66.6%
Difference: 1.3x higher for men
Gender on campus: 18% women/82% men
Kettering University’s acceptance rate favors men even though they far outnumber women on campus and in the number of applicants. That's in part a historical legacy. The university used to be called General Motors Institute and was best known for its automotive programs, says Tracie Jones, director of admissions. Recently, the university has added a wider variety of programs and increased the number of female faculty, Jones adds. The result? The gap between female and male admissions rates has shrunk in the past two years.
9. Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University
Nashville, Tenn.
Money Best Colleges rank: 24
Overall acceptance rate: 12.7%
Female rate: 11%
Male rate: 15%
Difference: 1.4x higher for men
Gender on campus: 50% women/50% men
Vanderbilt admitted roughly the same number of men and women for the fall of 2013, but there were almost 4,000 more female applicants than males. While Vanderbilt’s engineering program attracts many students, so, too, does its well-regarded education school and humanities programs, as well biological sciences, which doesn't see the same gender gap as other types of sciences.
8. Pitzer College
Pitzer College
Claremont, Calif.
Money Best Colleges rank: 196
Overall acceptance rate: 14.5%
Female rate: 12.7%
Male rate: 17.7%
Difference: 1.4x higher for men
Gender on campus: 60% women/40% men
Pitzer College doesn’t aim to have a 50/50 gender ratio on campus but sees some balance as important. That's harder to achieve with the difference in the number of prepared women and men applying to liberal arts colleges, says Jamila Everett, interim vice president for admission and financial aid. “There’s a decreasing amount of college-ready men in the pipeline,” she explains. Pitzer focuses on making sure its recruitment materials don’t alienate men from applying, by, for example, letting prospective male students hear from current ones, so they see how they would fit in on campus. Men's odds of acceptance can also vary by geography; applicants from New York and D.C. already tend to be well-represented on campus, while students from other regions are often in shorter supply.
7. Pomona College
Pomona College
Claremont, Calif.
Money Best Colleges rank: 38
Overall acceptance rate: 13.9%
Female rate: 12%
Male rate: 16.9%
Difference: 1.4x higher for men
Gender on campus: 52% women/48% men
Pomona doesn’t have a target for the number of men or women in a particular entering class, but the college does want a reasonable balance between the genders, says spokesman Mark Kendall. Pomona faces the same challenge as many other liberal arts schools around the country: There are fewer men than women going to college, and some simply don’t want to attend a small liberal arts school.
6. William Carey University
William Carey University
Hattiesburg, Miss.
Money Best Colleges rank: 221
Overall acceptance rate: 48.8%
Female rate: 42.6%
Male rate: 60.2%
Difference: 1.4x higher for men
Gender on campus: 64% women/36% men
William Carey is well known for its health sciences major, including programs generally dominated by women, such as nursing and psychology. But the Baptist college does not favor one gender over the other in its admissions decisions, university spokesman Joshua Wilson says. Any gap in admissions rates is “an anomaly of the applicant pool,” and the gap was smaller, about 10 percentage points, in other recent years, he said.
5. College of William & Mary
College of William & Mary
Williamsburg, Va.
Money Best Colleges rank: 75
Overall acceptance rate: 33.2%
Female rate: 28.8%
Male rate: 40.8%
Difference: 1.4x higher for men
Gender on campus: 55% women/45% men
William & Mary is the only public university on this list, but it shares much in common with the private liberal arts colleges that tend to be more appealing to female applicants. While William & Mary’s admit rate for men may be higher, the men and women who are accepted are very similar, spokeswoman Suzanne Seurattan says. In 2013, for example, women had an average GPA of 4.37 and men had 4.27. For average SAT scores, women scored 1391 and men 1407. “Looking only at acceptance rates provides an incomplete picture when looking at an applicant pool,” Seurattan adds.
4. Cooper Union
Cooper Union
New York City
Money Best Colleges rank: 9
Overall acceptance rate: 7.7%
Female acceptance rate: 6.2%
Male acceptance rate: 9.1%
Difference: 1.5x higher for men
Gender on campus: 36% women/64% men
Cooper Union has three schools—architecture, fine arts, and engineering—and the university tries to build well-balanced classes, including with gender, for each of them. But like many engineering schools, Cooper Union's doesn’t attract as many qualified women applicants as men, says Dean of Admissions Mitchell Lipton. The reverse is true in its fine arts school, but because engineering is the largest school at Cooper Union, the gender discrepancy there affects the admission rate for the overall university.
3. Brown University
Brown University
Providence, R.I.
Money Best Colleges rank: 32
Overall acceptance rate: 9.2%
Female rate: 7.7%
Male rate: 11.4%
Difference: 1.5x higher for men
Gender balance on campus: 52% women/48% men
In 2013, Brown University admitted 1,328 men and 1,326 women. But there were almost 6,000 more female applicants than male ones to the university known for its progressive campus attitude and strong liberal arts programs. Spokesman Mark Nickel says admissions decisions are based on a wide array of characteristics, and acceptance rates for different demographics of students vary naturally from year to year depending on the qualifications and talents of the applicants.
2. Vassar College
Vassar College
Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
Money Best Colleges rank: 96
Overall acceptance rate: 24.1%
Female rate: 19.1%
Male rate: 34.1%
Difference: 1.8x higher for men
Gender on campus: 56% women/44% men
Vassar College started admitting men almost 50 years ago, but its long history as a women’s college may amplify the imbalance in the number of female and male applicants. Administrators at the liberal arts college know from student surveys that maintaining gender balance on campus is important for student satisfaction, says Art Rodriguez, dean of admission and financial aid. But because Vassar has thousands more women applicants than men each year, it has to admit a bigger share of male applicants to accomplish that. Rodriguez adds, however, that there’s no significant difference between the academic preparation of the admitted students or their eventual graduation rates.
1. College of the Ozarks
College of the Ozarks
Point Lookout, Mo.
Money Best Colleges rank: 26
Overall acceptance rate: 13%
Female rate: 9.3%
Male rate: 19.3%
Difference: 2.1x higher for men
Gender on campus: 53% women/47% men
For the fall of 2013, College of the Ozarks received almost double the number of applications from women as from men. And to keep the student body balanced, the college admitted men at twice the rate it did women. While the Christian work college has historically received more applications from women than men, in 2013 the admissions rate gap was widened by the opening of a new residence hall for men, which allowed the college to admit and enroll more of them, says Marci Linson, dean of admissions.