

Marissa Mayer at 2011 Harvey Mudd Commencement - nsavant
http://youtu.be/uvDoBrdkd_c

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zach
Very cool! A perfect choice for this year, I think -- I'm delighted to see
that this year's freshman class was 52% female, very much like the world
itself!

HMC has come far from the early 90's when I was there -- it was still a male-
dominated institution and certainly not the better for it.

Of course, it also cost literally half as much even after inflation
adjustment, but that's another story...

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nsavant
I agree that is it good to see that the ratio is balancing but I worry about
the cost of this. The applicant breakdown is not 52% female, so should the
admitted students and accepted students be this high? I worry that since not
many girls apply to a school like Harvey Mudd, they are having to lower the
standards of acceptance in order to achieve this high female ratio.

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ahh
They are. It's getting fairly ridiculous. Maria Klawe is, to put it lightly, a
single-issue president. I'm glad she came (I did work with her husband my
senior year and was grateful for the opportunity) but I'm getting sick of
seeing bright kids accepted by Caltech and MIT but not Mudd...to tweak the
gender ratio.

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nsavant
Yea it is interesting. I guess there is a chance that this works in the long
term. In other words, with a 50% female ratio, more girls start applying to
standards are able to be raised. And maybe even some smart guys come because
of the favorable ratio. But I am really worried about the performance of the
graduates in the short term.

