stemstudent12345

I'm sorry, I see how my comment came across that way, but I truly didn't mean to imply that you personally didn't value fairness of opportunity. I can only speak from my own experiences, which mostly don't contain overt gender discrimination, but I suspect many experiences were subtly gendered nonetheless. For example, when I brought up with an undergraduate professor that I was considering an accelerated masters program in statistics, he encouraged me instead to pursue studying abroad and to consider grad school in a social science field. Now maybe this wasn't about gender at all (this particular professor was very encouraging usually); but I suspect my gender played a part in his response. In high school, when I wanted to take more advanced math classes than what my school offered, my teachers gave me a textbook and after-hours access to the computer lab so I could self-study. One of my male classmates who wanted more advanced classes got the same resources, but also got approved for an independent study where he received one-on-one instruction from a math teacher. Maybe my male classmate pushed harder for the independent study, maybe he was just better at math so the school saw more potential in him, or maybe it was some other factor, but maybe it was about gender. Even thinking back to elementary school, when I did well in math classes or proclaimed that I liked math, many well-meaning adults in my life suggested I could become a K-12 math teacher, rather than suggesting I could become a scientist or an engineer (math teaching is a super honorable and important profession! Don't get me wrong, I just wonder if a young boy who loves math would be told the same thing). There is also the aspect of microaggressions. In numerous meetings, classes, and seminars, I've seen women's questions brushed off as an annoyance, female Ph.D.s called by their first name in circumstances where their male colleagues were called Doctor, and women interrupted more regularly than their male counterparts. I've seen countless online professor ratings that reduce women to their looks or to their personality, rather than evaluating them the merits of their teaching and fairness of their grading. Like I mentioned in an earlier comment, women are sometimes the ones people first ask to take on unpaid service work, such as helping organize holiday parties or coordinating visit weekend. While these are ostensibly minor issues, I think they contribute to pushing women out of the mathematical sciences and other STEM fields.

I'm absolutely willing to consider the possibility that I'm just not that mathematically talented and that's why I'm having a hard time getting up to speed. I guess in my defense, it takes most people at least a year or two of coursework to meet the credit requirements for an undergraduate education in math (I understand there's a lot of fluff time in there), so the "couple of days" is probably more dream than reality. I'll add that in my case, I did have linear algebra (though it was a very basic course therein), but I know a number of folks admitted without any linear algebra at all (I assume everyone at least had calc II). But anyway, the spirit of your comment is well-taken, and I assure you I'm working hard to get up to speed mathematically with YouTube.

It's totally possible that you just have better peers than I do and that they aren't discriminatory! Unfortunately that's not the case in my department. I guess I would say that different numbers of women earning Ph.D.s and becoming professors in STEM fields isn't the only evidence of discrimination in the field, so I don't really find the argument that the discrepancy is due to personality differences compelling. There's a huge body of research on things like implicit bias, interruptions in meetings, subjective credibility of authors/teachers based on gender, etc. (not all of which depends on the Harvard IAT) which I think all important to consider.

I know statsguy said they were done with this thread, but I think it's important I respond anyway. I'm very grateful for my fellowship! I don't want to discount that as an important factor that if I do succeed, will have contributed to my success. Also some folks in my department have been very supportive in trying to help (mostly my fellow students) and I don't want to discount the work they've put in. I never said that they "don't support [me] at all." I said they don't provide enough support for helping me get up to speed. I didn't actually mean teaching as service work, because teaching is something you do directly for pay. I meant service work as in things that don't get paid, like helping organize admitted students day or organizing social events. Obviously men do these things to, it just is sometimes the case that women are pressured to do more of them. Am I from a middle-class family? That's news to me. Also worth mentioning it's definitely not a gender-specific fellowship. Affirmative action is certainly an advantage, but I'm sure you know it's meant to correct for other disadvantages that occur before/during admission, not to give anyone an unearned advantage. (EDIT: I realize I got a little defensive here when statsguy probably wasn't referring to me at all but rather to the women in their cohort. That was my bad, I was feeling frustrated. My point about affirmative action stands. ) All in all, hard work is really important! I don't mean to discount that (and I fully realize that practically-speaking, I need to put in the hours, which is what I am doing and will continue to do). I'm just hoping to have a conversation about some of those systemic and interpersonal factors that make it harder for some people than others. Socioeconomic status is one of those factors, so it's great to hear you know someone from a low-SES background who went on to be really successful in academia. However, his story is unfortunately the exception rather than the rule.

Hmmm, I agree that there definitely needs to be changes in how things are run well before the post-graduate level (see my earlier comment about conservative economist Glenn Loury and redirecting energy toward correcting key developmental inequalities early in life). However, at the risk of overanalyzing, I think it's interesting that you use the words "burden" and "disruptions" to describe basic inclusivity efforts. I 100% agree that faculty are doing invaluable work on research and that should be their priority. However, having diverse communities makes research better for everyone (even in fields where it's not traditionally valued, like STEM fields). (I haven't actually read it yet, but this article has been on my list for a while and may or may not support my point). Even if I didn't believe that everyone deserved the opportunity to at least work hard and pursue their interests as far as they were able, I would at least recognize the utilitarian value in not discounting huge amounts of natural talent and potential for hard work among people who happen to belong to certain racial/gender/etc categories.

I agree with you in practice. Of course I understand that faculty can't walk me through every derivation and teach me the properties of the trace of a projection matrix. My point though is a more idealistic one, which is that when a department has a pattern of admitting people without the necessary prerequisites and then watching those people fail out without a second thought (and most of those people happen to belong to a marginalized group, in my department's case women), they are doing nothing more than wasting people's time in the name of making themselves look "diverse" in admissions. The argument that the solution is for the people being admitted without the necessary background to simply work twice as hard as their counterparts (who are already working extremely hard) in order to be successful strikes me as unrealistic. In my case, I was trying to make ends meet financially the summer before I started, and spending 5 hours a day studying would have been impossible. Now that I'm in the program, I study constantly just to keep my head above water in my courses, and self-studying all the prerequisite material on top of that has not really been feasible (though I'm certainly trying). My point is that this is where I think the department should step in to help their admits, "diverse" or not, be successful. Your story actually gives me a good idea -- perhaps the department could offer funding for a summer review course before the program for those who need it. This certainly may have been a coincidence; I don't know your department or the people in it. However, I would urge you to consider the possibility that it may not have been. Sexism and other kinds of prejudice in academia can be quite insidious, and just because you don't think there was any bias doesn't mean women weren't treated in subtly different ways that might have influenced who didn't continue in the program. For example, is it possible that the women in your program were pressured to take on more service work and thus had less time for research? Or that advisors might have been ever-so-slightly more encouraging of a male student with mental health issues to seek treatment and take a leave of absence rather than quitting totally? Those are just two of a million ways this might not have been the coincidence you think it is (or it totally might have been a coincidence, I don't know, just urging you to to think about it. It would be interesting to give faculty/staff in our departments the gender-science test here implicit.harvard.edu).

Of course I generally agree that in a perfect world, a meritocracy would be ideal. An of course we should admit/retain all qualified students, rather than making weird arbitrary decisions about who gets to go to the best universities. See this podcast episode for a more eloquent explanation of my feelings http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/32-the-tortoise-and-the-hare Yeah, I think this is the kicker. AA is meant to level the playing field by accounting for those privileges. Some people (I'm thinking in particular of conservative economist Glenn Loury) think we should redirect all resources currently being directed at Afirmative Action at the university level toward correcting developmental disparities that occur earlier in life -- e.g. preK access, primary education, literacy, etc. I personally think AA is largely a good thing, I just think it needs to coincide with larger institutional commitment to diversity.

That makes sense, I'll keep that in mind.

Thanks! I'll try to keep that in mind.

No, I don't think my department is considered particularly theoretical. It seems to me that a considerable proportion (though probably less than half) of faculty/students in the department are doing applied work. I agree about domestic students being generally less qualified. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like domestic students tend to be less qualified because grad programs have more spots for U.S. citizens because we can receive NSF, NIH, and other federal grant funding. I think it's true in my department that many of the domestic men feel less qualified than international men, but I have also spoken with some international women who also feel underqualified even compared to domestic men in the program. I could be wrong though; my evidence about the qualifications of international women in the department is purely anecdotal, while my evidence about domestic women being disproportionately likely to be academically dismissed is based on direct statements from the faculty and senior students to that effect.

I would have agreed with you until recently, but after learning about all the women failing out of my program, I suspect they treats male and female applicants a little differently. Of course I'm sure that many highly qualified women applied and were rejected, and I feel for them and the randomness of admissions, but I think it's possible that many more highly qualified men were rejected. Complicating this is the fact that the adcom nominated me for (and I received) a fellowship from the graduate school, which means the graduate school pays my tuition and stipend, not the department (at least for the few couple years of the program). This fellowship is intended for "diverse" students, and at the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I can't help but wonder if the adcom takes into account likelihood of failing out of the program when nominating people for the fellowship, so they can avoid "wasting" money on people who are going to leave. (This is supported by the fact that a significant proportion of the people who've left the program have also been recipients of the fellowship). But I may be reading too far into things. That makes sense, I'll look into that! Thanks.

Hi all, I'm using a throwaway because of the small probability that I could be identified by my profile, and I want to be really honest. I'm a domestic white female Ph.D. student in a fairly high ranking statistics department, and I've gotten the sense that I was likely admitted despite my relatively weak academic background for diversity reasons. I’ve gathered that the department views admitting me and other “diverse” applicants as a way of protecting appearances, and that they are indifferent toward our success in the program (this is supported by the fact that most of the students who've been asked to leave the program for academic performance reasons have been women). I want to add the disclaimer that I fully support affirmative action (when coupled with an institutional commitment to the success of people from diverse backgrounds), that I acknowledge the cultural and systemic disadvantages that women face especially in STEM, and that I realized that being a white U.S. citizen is a huge advantage. To be specific, I'm growing frustrated with my department for not offering much in the way of support for bringing me up to speed academically. When I’ve brought up my academic struggles with professors and the program coordinator, they have been generally dismissive, and really only suggested that I “not give up”, that I seek help from my peers, and that I spend more time reading the textbook (as if all my time isn’t already devoted to studying). Let me be clear that I’m not asking them to hold my hand through everything, but rather suggesting that if they’re going to admit students who don’t have the requisite background, they should offer resources such as tutoring, extended office hours, lower-level classes, or extended funding for people who might need longer to get through the program. I realize they want to keep academic standards high, but I believe that part of doing that is recognizing the value diversity brings to an intellectual community and providing the necessary support to retain students, especially those belonging to marginalized groups. In other words, I feel the department is trying to protect themselves from accusations of sexism in admissions, while demonstrating no actual commitment to the success of women in the program. I should be clear that I am not suffering from impostor syndrome (though I do sometimes experience that), because I am demonstrably less qualified than many of my colleagues in the program. I guess I’m saying all this mostly to get it off my chest and hopefully to start a conversation, but I will ask for one piece of advice. A faculty member recently asked for anonymous feedback on the department culture. However, I fear the department is too small for the google form’s anonymity to be meaningful. Is there any way I could convey some of my concerns without sacrificing my reputation? (I’m sure my feelings will hardly be a revelation to many people reading this - I will add that I went to a historically women’s college for undergrad so I have been largely sheltered from the reality of sexism in academia until now)