More women than men were accepted into Harvard University for 2004-05 school year, meaning female students will outnumber their male counterparts in the incoming freshman class for the first time in the school’s history.
“This milestone is a long way from the 4-to-1 ratio of males to females in the 1960s,” William Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions and financial aid, said in a statement. “We are grateful to the visionaries at Harvard who instituted equal access admissions in the 1970s, as well as to faculty, students, staff and alumni who have worked so hard over the years to recruit outstanding women to the college.”
Harvard received 19,750 applicants for the upcoming school year. Of those applicants, 1,016 females and 1,013 males were accepted. Those chosen have until May 1 to respond with their acceptance of Harvard’s offer.
Of those who applied to Harvard, 56 percent scored 1,400 or higher on their SATs and 2,800 applicants were class valedictorians.
Harvard also set university records for the percentage of minorities accepted. The class of 2008 will be composed of 18.9 percent Asian American, 10.3 percent African American and 9.5 percent Hispanic.
All Harvard applicants are considered individually, and the 35 members of the Admissions Committee vote in February and March to determine which applicants are accepted.
For a large number of colleges and universities across the country, women have outnumbered men for a number of years.
The University of Wisconsin currently has more undergraduate female students than male undergraduates. For the spring semester, there were 14,076 women enrolled compared to 12,609 men.
Assistant Registrar Catherine Sheskey said the registrar’s office does not have a final picture of how UW’s class of 2008 will be composed because the admissions have not yet been finalized.
UW students agreed that the male to female ratio is apparent in certain classes or majors that tend to be composed of one gender, but campus life overall seems to be evenly distributed.
“Last semester I noticed there were more girls than guys because I had more classes related to my major, dietetics, and much more girls are in that than guys,” UW freshman Ashley Sotiros said.
UW freshman Jason Heikkinen agreed that some classes are disproportionately female.
“I don’t usually notice that there are more girls than guys, but it is apparent in some classes such as Political Science 104, which is about 60 percent female,” Heikkinen said.
In certain majors such as journalism, the gender difference is more noticeable than in a general requirement class. UW’s undergraduate statistics indicate there are 101 males accepted into the Journalism BA program as compared to 299 females in the major. Registrar Sheskey also noted that the ratio of females to males at most colleges is representative of the makeup of society.
“I think [gender] enrollment is pretty representative of society,” Heikkinen said. “It’s obviously more socially acceptable for a girl to attend college than it was, say, 40 years ago.”
