Here are Harvey Mudd's acceptance rates by gender:<p>Men 14.4%<p>Women 38%<p>Source: <a href="http://www.parchment.com/c/college/college-545-harvey-mudd-college.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.parchment.com/c/college/college-545-harvey-mudd-c...</a><p>I am perpetually bamboozled how anyone can think anecdotes like this matter. If Harvard wanted too I am sure they could make half their undergraduate population disabled black lesbians. That does not prove that your average state school is horrible and discriminatory just because that is not their class composition.<p>Elite schools get more applicants of either gender than they have room for and those applicants are of very high quality with very high levels of interest in the subject matter.
You know, on reflection, this is actually a good thing. Not because of the diversity - screw diversity. Because you'll have more people with aptitude admitted. Programming aptitude is mostly evenly distributed regardless of gender and race, therefore if you keep your number admitted persons constant, but give a good incentive for every kind of person to apply, you'll end up with better applicants. Or to put it another way, the best 1000 white male americans are worse than the best 1000 americans in general. And at least in this case, I'd expect that there would be about as many capable females as males. Things might go skewed if we try to have the same number of heterosexuals and homosexuals or left-handed and right-handed people though.
It seems a bit odd that they're quoting their Junior class makeup-- makes me think that's the best data point they have, and it exaggerates their success. My understanding is that CS enrollment by gender isn't the issue, it's CS graduation rate.