By Grey Joyner, Admission Consultant

“Does my gender impact my chances of getting into college?” It’s a question we get a lot from students. The answer is yes, it can – and how it impacts your chances varies considerably from university to university.

At top tech schools, acceptance rates for women are significantly higher than for men (e.g. 5.6% for women vs. 3.1% for men at MIT). However, at many other schools, including many Ivy League schools, acceptance rates for men are significantly higher than for women (e.g. 4.2% for women vs. 6.9% for men at Brown). So how your gender plays a role in your application is entirely dependent on which university you are considering.

I’ve attempted to dive into this topic further, with the goal of answering two questions:

Where does gender impact admission chances, and how?
What drives this?

To answer these questions, I have delved into data from 22 top US universities. I have split the universities analyzed into four groups:

Ivy: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Brown, Dartmouth, Penn, Cornell
Tech: MIT, Cal Tech
Other private: Stanford, Duke, University of Chicago, Rice, Washington University in St. Louis, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern
Public: UC Berkeley, UCLA, University of Virginia, University of North Carolina, University of Michigan

The data I have collected comes from the publicly available Common Data Set (CDS) published by each university. I have used the most recent CDS for each university, which is the 2023-24 CDS (class of 2027) except for Columbia, MIT and University of Virginia (where the most recent is the 2022-23 CDS) and Duke (where the most recent is the 2021-22 CDS).

I’ve included a table of the data at the end of this article, however I want to go over some key takeaways. I noticed different trends across each university grouping, so I will split the takeaways by these groups.

Ivy: desire to strike a gender balance leaves acceptance rates higher for men at some universities

All 8 Ivy League universities received more applications from women than from men. (This ranged from men comprising 38% of applicants at Brown to 50% at Cornell.)

At the same time, all Ivy League schools appeared to value a gender balance in their incoming class, as the percent of acceptances who were male ranged from 46% at Penn and Cornell to 51% at Dartmouth.

As such, in order to strike this gender balance, schools with significantly higher application numbers from women needed to accept a greater percentage of male applicants than female applicants.

The schools where this was seen are Brown, Columbia, Yale and Dartmouth. In each of these schools, application rates for men were at least a full percentage point higher than those for women (on an absolute basis). In simple terms, at these universities it is easier to get in if you are male.

At Harvard, Princeton and Penn, acceptance rates were very similar for men and women. Each of these schools received a relatively balanced mix of applications from men and women and did not need to preference either gender in the application process.

Cornell is the only Ivy League school where acceptance rates for women (8.5%) are significantly higher than acceptance rates for men (7.3%).

Across the Ivy League, acceptance rates for men (5.5%) were slightly higher than acceptance rates for women (4.9%). But given the important differences across universities, prospective applicants should consider each university individually when creating their application strategy.

Tech – significantly higher numbers of male applicants gives women an advantage

Both of the technology-focused universities that I looked at, MIT and Cal Tech, received significantly more applications from men than from women. At MIT, 64% of applicants were male, while that figure was 68% for Cal Tech.

Both schools appeared to value a gender balance as well, with males making up 49% of the acceptances at MIT and 56% of the acceptances at Cal Tech.

As a result, acceptance rates were significantly higher for women than for men at both universities. At MIT, 5.6% of female applicants were accepted, compared to 3.1% of male applicants. At Cal Tech, those figures were 4.4% and 2.6%, respectively.

In sum, because these two top tech schools receive significantly more applications from men than from women, women are at an advantage in the application process.

Other private – generally minimal differences across genders

Males made up at least 45% of applicants at each of the other top private universities I analyzed (Stanford, Duke, University of Chicago, Rice, Washington University in St. Louis, Johns Hopkins and Northwestern).

As such, these schools did not need to significantly preference one gender over another in the application process in order to strike a gender balance in their pool of accepted students. In all but one of these schools, the acceptance rates for men and women were within one percentage point of each other.

The one exception was the University of Chicago, which accepted significantly more men than women despite getting a larger number of applications from women. As such, the acceptance rate for men was 5.7% compared to 4.0% for women. I looked into past data to see if this was a one-off, and while the discrepancy is largest for the 2023-24 CDS (class of 2027), the same trend was there for the previous two years (data prior to this was unavailable). In each of the past three years, the University of Chicago has accepted more men than women despite getting more applications from women.

Public – acceptance rates higher for women, likely due to better grades rather than an advantage in the application process

Each of the five top public universities I looked into (UC Berkeley, UCLA, University of Virginia, University of North Carolina, University of Michigan) received more applications from women than from men. Despite this, acceptance rates for women were greater than acceptance rates for men at all five universities.

Compared to private universities (in particular, Ivy League universities), public universities appear to care less about striking a gender balance in their pool of accepted students. As such, they do not provide an advantage to men when their applications are majority female.

The question with these universities, though, becomes why their acceptance rates are higher for women. In some cases, the difference is significant – for example, at UC Berkeley, the acceptance rate for men is 9.1% while the figure for women is 14.0%, and at all five universities, the acceptance rate for women was more than a full percentage point higher than that for men.

This is likely due to the fact that women, on average, get better grades in high school than men (Damour, 2019). As public universities tend to care less about striking a gender balance, they can focus on accepting the best applicants. Since women tend to get stronger grades, they will hold the advantage.

When it comes to application strategy, students should not focus on the impact of gender at schools like this.

Conclusion – understand how your gender will affect your application chances

In summary, how your gender will impact your application chances differs based on which university you are considering. At some universities (particularly tech-focused universities), women hold an advantage, while at others (in particular, some Ivy League universities), men have an advantage. At many other universities, gender makes a minimal difference.

Prospective students should understand these nuances to help them craft their application strategy, in particular when deciding which universities to apply to.

—

Appendix 1:

School	Group	Male applicants	Male acceptance rate	Female applicants	Female acceptance rate
Brown	Ivy	19666	6.9%	31650	4.2%
Cal Tech	Tech	8973	2.6%	4134	4.4%
Columbia	Ivy	24233	4.4%	34734	3.3%
Cornell	Ivy	33674	7.3%	34172	8.5%
Dartmouth	Ivy	13516	6.8%	15325	5.7%
Duke	Private	23019	5.7%	26504	6.1%
Harvard	Ivy	26301	3.5%	30636	3.4%
Johns Hopkins	Private	17355	7.9%	21538	7.2%
MIT	Tech	21588	3.1%	12179	5.6%
Northwestern	Private	24511	7.1%	27256	7.4%
Penn	Ivy	27128	5.9%	32337	5.8%
Princeton	Ivy	19541	4.5%	20103	4.5%
Rice	Private	15982	7.7%	15077	8.1%
Stanford	Private	27133	3.8%	26600	4.0%
UC Berkeley	Public	57218	9.1%	62676	14.0%
UCLA	Public	64324	7.4%	75500	10.0%
University of Chicago	Private	17373	5.7%	21249	4.0%
University of Michigan	Public	43607	16.1%	44024	19.8%
University of North Carolina	Public	23947	18.1%	33955	19.2%
University of Virginia	Public	23195	17.7%	27731	19.4%
WUSTL	Private	15206	12.1%	17034	11.8%
Yale	Ivy	22003	5.1%	29799	4.0%
TOTAL		569493	8.1%	644213	9.2%
TOTAL (Ivy)		186062	5.5%	228756	4.9%
TOTAL (Tech)		30561	2.9%	16313	5.3%
TOTAL (Private)		140579	6.8%	155258	6.6%
TOTAL (Public)		212291	12.0%	243886	15.1%

—

Sources:

Damour, L. (2019). Opinion | Why Girls Beat Boys at School and Lose to Them at the Office. The New York Times. [online] 7 Feb. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/07/opinion/sunday/girls-school-confidence.html.