Really, it does. And if a student is eminently qualified, she'll make her second or third choice. It's not the end of the world. Let's worry about students from disadvantaged backgrounds; if they happen to be women, OK.

It's nice to get a peek behind the admissions process, though; Britz sounds like a just officer of her institution. Just replace "Dear college applicant, So sorry to hear you're a girl..." with "So sorry to hear you're a boy," or "So sorry to hear you're an Indian national," or "So sorry your private school has too few students to make accurate comparisions" and note the gender gap as a curious phenomenon. Women are still the majority in higher education, after all, and that's not likely to change soon.

As Terry Tate, Office Linebacker, would say: "That ain't new, baby!"

Dear College Applicant: So sorry to hear you're a

girl

boy

non-minority

minority

non-handicapped

handicapped

non-athlete

state resident

out-of-state resident

financially needy student

non-financially needy student

member of religious group

non-member of a religious group

student from another country

student from this country

person who overcame personal hardships

person who didn't overcome personal hardships

person whose family has given money to the college

person whose family hasn't... oh, I give up.

When I read the op-ed, I couldn't help but notice the contrast between all those girls writing about their dreams of discovering vaccines, becoming leaders, artists, etc., and their adult counterparts (see piece on Caitlyn Flanagan below) going on about how the only right course for women is to subordinate their career aspirations for their husbands and children. What is happening to women in our society? Why do so many women start out so filled with optimism and excitement about their careers, then end up ten or fifteen years later saying the most important thing they can do is make sure their husband has a hot meal waiting for him and their biggest worry is over whether they were at home when their kid's gerbil died?

This is just one of many posts, articles, news stories, etc, on how it's gotten tougher to get into top schools / any schools -- the demand has increased; a growing population of high school graduates is chasing a static number of college slots; etcetc.

But why is this? Why are the top school not responding to the increase in high-quality applicants with an increase in class sizes? Why are they not taking advantage of the opportunity to grow their institutions? With larger numbers of highly-qualified applicants, this could easily be done with no loss of calibre -- and it's not as if there aren't thousands or tens of thousands of under-employed and highly-qualified scholars from whom to select in increasing faculty sizes as well.

In any other field, an increase in demand would be immediately responded to with an increase in supply. So what's so special about higher education that the laws of supply and demand should have been repealed? Why are elite universities -- or colleges at all levels -- not doubling and tripling in size? Anyone out there know?

Being rejected from one's top choice school is not a national frigging tragedy. You're not denying somebody an education by rejecting them at an elite school, you're simply denying them an education at your particular institution. This is not Brown v. Board of Education, people. There are countries where females can't ever attend school, much less fret because they got rejected from Kenyon.

Caveat: I went to school back when admissions were far less competitive and insane, so that's probably very easy for me to say.

Here are Male/Female ratios for some selective colleges to ponder (Source: 2006 Fiske Guide to Colleges), it is interesting to note that Kenyon, the school where the NYT op-ed author is Dean of Admissions, is 45/55:

Harvard 54/46

Princeton 52/48

Stanford 51/49

Yale 50/50

Columbia 49/51

Brown 47/53

Amherst 52/48

Penn 51/49

Dartmouth 51/49

Georgetown 46/54

Williams 5050

Duke 51/49

Middlebury 47/53

Swarthmore 48/52

Washington U. 47/53

Tufts 48/52

U. Va. 45/55

Haverford 47/53

Carleton 48/52

Chicago 49/51

Colgate 50/50

BU 40/60

Grinnell 45/55

Kenyon 45/55

The concept of small, liberal arts colleges using an informal sort of Affirmative Action to admit a larger pool of young white men is absolutely ridiculous. Where else in modern American society do white males need any sort of help?

I recently graduated from one of those so-called "elite" institutions, and before that spent four years in one of those "affluent" suburbs with the fancy white people who pretend they're middle class. My graduating class was full of males who did not work very hard; though they took challenging courses, they didn't make the necessary effort to obtain an A. Now, with their second-tier educations these men are having no trouble getting jobs, whereas I know plenty of Ivy League-educated females who are temping/waitressing just to scrape by, and not from lack of ambition/attempts to get a job.

Admitting less-lustrous male applicants will only perpetuate the wage gap, the low numbers of female CEO's, etc. Even when women are allowed to make up a decided majority (as in law schools) that hasn't helped even out gender imbalances in the workplace.

Besides, any man who doesn't see the social benefit of attending a school that has a greater number of females than males isn't smart enough to attend anyways!

Men have job options fresh out of high school that are far better than those available to women. In order to make more money than a waitress, a woman needs college, unless she is willing (and able) to be a prostitute or an exotic dancer. I suspect that the reason that women outnumber men in colleges is at least partly influenced by the reality that more men choose to take the immediate rewards they have available to them rather than spend the time and money to get a college degree. I'm not trying to say that men have it easy - they work hard for their money. But they do have options that are simply not available to women. One option off the top of my head is the construction industry. A 20 year old man can make good money helping build houses. How many women do you see working at construction sites?