The Nationwide Gender Gap in College Acceptance Rates

The U.S. Department of Education recently published a new report that contains statistics on the gender gap in college applications and acceptance rates. In 2014, there 5,299,853 applicants submitted by women for places at Title IV four-year institutions that did not have open admissions and thus had selective admission processes. There were more than a million fewer applications placed by men at these institutions. It should be noted that these figures are the total number of applications submitted and not the total number of students who submitted applications. Many prospective students submit applications to several colleges and universities.

Of the more than 5.2 million applications submitted by women, they received 3,039,475 offers of admission. Thus, at selective four-year institutions nationwide, the acceptance rate for all women applicants was 57.4 percent. Of the 4.2 million men who applied to selective, four-year educational institutions, 2,265,781 were offered admission. Therefore, the nationwide college acceptance rate for men was 53.9 percent. Thus, the acceptance rate for women overall was 3.5 percentage points higher than the acceptance rate for men.

If we restrict the data to private, nonprofit institutions, the acceptance rate of 52.3 percent for women was 4.1 percentage points higher than the acceptance rate for men at selective four-year institutions.