[gchallen]

> That said I’m not sure how much gender based affirmitive action there is in science/engineering today.

Potentially quite a bit. Here's some recent data about admissions into the highly-competitive Illinois CS program: https://www.reddit.com/r/UIUC/comments/12kwc4a/uiuc_cs_admis...

Note that admissions rates for female applicants are higher across all categories—international, out-of-state, and in-state. Obviously you can't fully tell what's going on here without more of an understanding of the strengths of the different pools, but a 10–30% spread (for in-state) suggests that gender is being directly considered.

IANAL, but I'm also concerned about the degree to which this decision affects the use of other factors during college admissions. Fundamentally admissions is a complex balance between prior performance and future potential, and only admitting based on prior performance means that we're stuck perpetuating existing societal inequities.

[kenjackson]

I do know that 25 years ago or so there considerable weight given to gender in sciences and engineering. I do feel like all talk of it has disappeared, and wasn't sure if it was because it was no longer a factor or because race became the dominant talking point.

From the data you present I suspect that there is weight still given to gender. I wonder how much energy there would be to investigating this? I wonder how many guys who get rejected from MIT CS will now do Tik Toks about how a girl took his spot, since he can no longer say it was a black kid?

[peterfirefly]

Harvey Mudd seems to discriminate heavily in favour of women.