More women than men now enroll in college, but the reverse has long been true at universities with a focus on science and engineering. Last year at the California Institute of Technology, in fact, female students made up only 28.5 percent of the freshman class. But this year, according to today’s Los Angeles Times, that proportion shot up to 37 percent, the highest since Caltech went coed, in 1970.
Caltech officials, who just seven years ago were chagrined to learn that no black students had enrolled in the freshman class, say that they did not bump up the number of women with affirmative action or lower standards. Instead, they say, they recruited aggressively. Still, they have some ways to go before they match MIT, their chief East Coast rival, which expects a freshman class this fall that is 46 percent female. —Andrew Mytelka
