Is applying to Oxford CS as a woman a disadvantage

So I have been looking over the admissions statistics for Oxford and Cambridge for last years cycle for CS. Looking at shortlisting and offers by gender it seems women have the rather shorter end of the stick.

Last year Oxford shortlisted 29% of its male candidates, and gave offers to 12% of all male applicants. Whereas for women, only 20% were shortlisted and 9% given offers. Other/Prefer not to say was 36% shortlisted, 19% offer.

this seems wholly unfair? and does. not look like encouraging women into stem at all. 74.8% of applicants where male but total offers for men were 78.3%.
Women made up 22.3% of all applicants but only received 16.9% of the offers. Other/prefer not to say 2.9% of applicants but 4.8% of offers.

Thoughts?

Reply 1

marcus.0

Correlation is not always causation.

What benefit does Oxbridge have, as elite institutions chasing the most academically gifted candidates, to go out of their way to discriminate against the female applicants? If anything, they are interested in making the numbers as even as possible.
Other factors are the cause here, and it's impossible to truly know which. Perhaps the MAT/TMUA scoring of male applicants in that particular year was stronger than the female applicants. Perhaps it is a low adoption of advanced programming languages with females, leading to lower scores in the interviews and lower demonstrated interest in the subject.

By the way, the figures you've cited show a higher shortlist to offer conversion rate for females (41% to 45%), and the highest conversion rate is with Other/Prefer not to say at 52.8%. Could I not argue that Oxford is actually more favorable to get into if you go gender-blind?

Try not to fuss over admissions statistics. I saw someone post this week about comparing Oxbridge acceptance rates while failing to account that their intakes are completely different. There is more than just numbers.

Reply 2

Stiffy Byng

OP, you have leapt to assume unfairness and, indeed, unlawful sex discrimination by those making admission decisions. As pointed out above, correlation is not causation.

Reply 3

Anonymous #2

Original post

by Anonymous

So I have been looking over the admissions statistics for Oxford and Cambridge for last years cycle for CS. Looking at shortlisting and offers by gender it seems women have the rather shorter end of the stick.
Last year Oxford shortlisted 29% of its male candidates, and gave offers to 12% of all male applicants. Whereas for women, only 20% were shortlisted and 9% given offers. Other/Prefer not to say was 36% shortlisted, 19% offer.
this seems wholly unfair? and does. not look like encouraging women into stem at all. 74.8% of applicants where male but total offers for men were 78.3%.
Women made up 22.3% of all applicants but only received 16.9% of the offers. Other/prefer not to say 2.9% of applicants but 4.8% of offers.
Thoughts?