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Should I not bother with Imperial since I’m a girl?

Thinking of applying for aero engineering but I’ve heard so much about the ratio of male:female that it’s discouraging. Does the university favour males over females and does that mean I probably have a lesser chance of getting an offer?

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Much more likely that fewer women apply to that degree , as opposed to some sexism.
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Original post by Anonymous
Thinking of applying for aero engineering but I’ve heard so much about the ratio of male:female that it’s discouraging. Does the university favour males over females and does that mean I probably have a lesser chance of getting an offer?

I was a girly girly when I was soo young, but literally I have a school that’s exactly like Imperial, high amounts of boy, and you would actually see yourself adapting to that environment, now im a grown Tom-boy girl, people even call me a boy sometimes due to the way I talk or move and walk 😂, I’d say go for it!! It’s way much better experience and the cracking jokes you all guys will have!
Reply 3
Original post by ZizAndZaz
I was a girly girly when I was soo young, but literally I have a school that’s exactly like Imperial, high amounts of boy, and you would actually see yourself adapting to that environment, now im a grown Tom-boy girl, people even call me a boy sometimes due to the way I talk or move and walk 😂, I’d say go for it!! It’s way much better experience and the cracking jokes you all guys will have!

I’m not exactly a tomboy though... I consider myself reserved and feminine on the social side though of course I’m neutral/open-minded with regards to humour.
Original post by Anonymous
Thinking of applying for aero engineering but I’ve heard so much about the ratio of male:female that it’s discouraging. Does the university favour males over females and does that mean I probably have a lesser chance of getting an offer?


It’s in any universities best interests to get as many females onto engineering or science/computing related courses as possible. The high number of males is because of the proportion of applicants, not the university itself. Unfortunately we are taught from a young age the kind of industries suited to our gender! Hopefully over the next few years we will start to see more change.
Reply 5
Original post by Anonymous
Thinking of applying for aero engineering but I’ve heard so much about the ratio of male:female that it’s discouraging. Does the university favour males over females and does that mean I probably have a lesser chance of getting an offer?

The gender ratio for each individual course is similar to other unis. Look at any engineering course at any university, it'll most likely be male-dominated. Arts, humanities, biosciences and especially psychology tend to have more female than male students so at other unis where they offer a wider range of courses it balances out.
Original post by Anonymous
Thinking of applying for aero engineering but I’ve heard so much about the ratio of male:female that it’s discouraging. Does the university favour males over females and does that mean I probably have a lesser chance of getting an offer?

I think more males just do engineering than females, I don't think it's the uni.

Besides, my teacher said that since so few females do engineering, they're more likely to get job offers - there was a girl at my school who went on to doing engineering and she got a job pretty much immediately after graduating because she's a woman and then was promoted to a manager not long after. She earns wayyyy more than my teacher (he earns around £50k) and I think she's still in her 20s.
Reply 7
Original post by Anonymous
Thinking of applying for aero engineering but I’ve heard so much about the ratio of male:female that it’s discouraging. Does the university favour males over females and does that mean I probably have a lesser chance of getting an offer?


Gosh, you should apply!

Would this be to start in the autumn of 2022?
Imperial would probably love if more females applied to the courses which are typically male-dominated, rather than the reverse.

In terms of their admissions and staff, in general they’re a good bunch and I haven’t encountered any sexism/ preference for one gender over the other, in my experience.
(edited 2 years ago)
Engineering in general has more males than females, it's the nature of the job. Like how teaching and nursing have more females than males. Regardless of which uni you go to you'd have to get used to typically being around more males than females in engineering (at least for now, who knows what it'll be like in the future).

It also shouldn't matter. I work with mainly men and have no issues. What puts you off going for a male-dominated career?
(edited 2 years ago)
Original post by medicphd
Engineering in general has more males than females, it's the nature of the job. Like how teaching and nursing have more females than males. Regardless of which uni you go to you'd have to get used to typically being around more males than females in engineering (at least for now, who knows what it'll be like in the future).

It also shouldn't matter. I would with mainly men and have no issues. What puts you off going for a male-dominated career?

I never said I was put off on going into a male-dominated career.

I was just worried about the offer rate for girls since so little females seem to do the course; it doesn’t help that I assume myself to be intrinsically dumber than the boys in my class either.
I started on an engineering course (many moons ago). There were 4 girls out of 60. We had a really great social life :smile: Sadly I didn't like the actual course and switched after 1 term but that was not because of the gender ratio.
Original post by carrotstar
It’s in any universities best interests to get as many females onto engineering or science/computing related courses as possible. The high number of males is because of the proportion of applicants, not the university itself. Unfortunately we are taught from a young age the kind of industries suited to our gender! Hopefully over the next few years we will start to see more change.

These six references looking at multinational data of females in STEM suggest your assumption that: "the high number of males is because of the proportion of applications" might be to some extent because "we are taught from a young age the kind of industries suited to our gender" does not reflect the real world data. It seems the opposite effect is occurring in fact. In more patriarchal societies like Saudi Arabia, there are a greater proportion of females in STEM than in Western liberal democracies.

1. Charles, M., & Bradley, K. (2009). Indulging Our Gendered Selves? Sex Segregation by Field of Study in 44 Countries. American Journal of Sociology, 114(4), 924–976. https://doi.org/10.1086/595942
2. Giolla, E. Mac, & Kajonius, P. J. (2019). Sex differences in personality are larger in gender equal countries : Replicating and extending a surprising finding, 54(6), 705–711. https://doi.org/10.1002/ijop.12529
3. Kaiser, T., Giudice, M. Del, & Booth, T. (2019). Global sex differences in personality : Replication with an open online dataset, (June), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12500
4. Jiang, S., Schenke, K., Eccles, J. S., Xu, D., & Warschauer, M. (2018). Cross-national comparison of gender differences in the enrollment in and completion of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics Massive Open Online Courses. PLOS ONE, 13(9), e0202463. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0202463
5. Lippa, R. A., Preston, K., & Penner, J. (2014). Women’s Representation in 60 Occupations from 1972 to 2010: More Women in High-Status Jobs, Few Women in Things-Oriented Jobs. PLoS ONE, 9(5), e95960. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0095960
6. Stoet, G., & Geary, D. C. (2018). The Gender-Equality Paradox in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education. Psychological Science, 29(4), 581–593. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797617741719
Original post by Anonymous
I never said I was put off on going into a male-dominated career.

I was just worried about the offer rate for girls since so little females seem to do the course; it doesn’t help that I assume myself to be intrinsically dumber than the boys in my class either.

Like people have said before, it's unlikely to be Imperial itself or any kind of intrinsic sexism, it's probably much more likely that they'd encourage more females to apply seeing as there's such a push to get more females into STEM (particularly the physical sciences/engineering).

If you like the course and think it's something you want to go into, I would try to not overthink things like this. It's common to perceive others as having it easier, confidence in your abilities grows over time.
I went to Imperial and there are fantastic female leaders in all domains with plenty of opportunity to collaborate across departments and get mentorship. If you love your subject then Imperial is one of the best places in the world to do it. Believe in your own abilities based on your own performance rather than boys in your class.

When things reopen I recommend going to see the Marie Curie museum in Paris. Alright she was a scientist rather than an engineer, but the amount of crap she had to overcome before winning two Nobel prizes was astonishing. Amazing woman.
Original post by Anonymous
Thinking of applying for aero engineering but I’ve heard so much about the ratio of male:female that it’s discouraging. Does the university favour males over females and does that mean I probably have a lesser chance of getting an offer?

As I happen to know Imperial College very very well you would find out that there are indeed many more males than females in all but all scientific and engineering courses. Only in Maths you have a good number of females.

However you could still apply as they do encourage applications from women who are obviously underrepresented in all these courses.

Aerospace engineering would require all A in your A-level by the way.
Original post by Anonymous
Thinking of applying for aero engineering but I’ve heard so much about the ratio of male:female that it’s discouraging. Does the university favour males over females and does that mean I probably have a lesser chance of getting an offer?


I know exactly what you feel like..i'm also a girl and thinking of applying to Imperial, but for Physics.
Just go for it imo. It's pretty much the same at any uni.
Original post by Anonymous
Thinking of applying for aero engineering but I’ve heard so much about the ratio of male:female that it’s discouraging. Does the university favour males over females and does that mean I probably have a lesser chance of getting an offer?

I'm also a girl (:hello:), and I applied to Imperial this year for an engineering degree (not aero though).

It's my insurance choice, and I've never felt like I was being treated differently throughout the process. The gender ratio was more or less the same as anywhere else really (physics has an awful gender balance everywhere).

You have the same chance of getting an offer as a guy - probably higher, as girls doing STEM subjects tend to often be better than boys at them.

Spoiler


Original post by Qxi.xli
I know exactly what you feel like..i'm also a girl and thinking of applying to Imperial, but for Physics.
Just go for it imo. It's pretty much the same at any uni.

Go for it! Imperial is an amazing university.

Spoiler

Original post by Anonymous
I'm also a girl (:hello:), and I applied to Imperial this year for an engineering degree (not aero though).

It's my insurance choice, and I've never felt like I was being treated differently throughout the process. The gender ratio was more or less the same as anywhere else really (physics has an awful gender balance everywhere).

You have the same chance of getting an offer as a guy - probably higher, as girls doing STEM subjects tend to often be better than boys at them.

Spoiler



Go for it! Imperial is an amazing university.

Spoiler



haha I agree with your friends, I don't think I'm good enough, but I'm applying anyways.
and yeah but I'm going to apply to Oxford though since I can do just Physics there :biggrin:
Girl! Apply! If you really want it, go for it!!!

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