I don’t have to tell Harvard anything. They already know what they should know. Which is why GREs, undergrad transcripts and GPAs are not the most important things required to get into grad school. Letters of references and experiences in research are!
Here’s what Assistant professor Matt Might from University of Utah (who has been a part of Graduate school selection committee) has to say: “GPA? I don’t care if it’s 2.0 or 4.0. I won’t even look at it. The school you went to? I’ll judge you the same whether you went to Nowhere State U or a top-ten school. Transcripts? Never seen one. GREs? Irrelevant. Where you work/worked? Unless it’s a research lab, it’s not important. I don’t think these items have much predictive capacity as to whether or not someone can complete a Ph.D.”

Even Harvard knows that a student applying for Engineering with say an average of 60′s but with a lot of experience (such as participation in robotics teams, science clubs, seminars, attending public lectures and participating in contests related to engineering) gets preference over someone with a 90′s average but with a total lack of experience. Oh.. and when it comes to Harvard, money and family status also counts.

Of course, men and women “THINK DIFFERENTLY”, because “WE ALL THINK DIFFERENTLY”!!
Realism is far out of reach for you. You’re running on fumes when it comes to reality.
I don’t know how old you are; but you certainly do not know how a lot of the things work.
Hopefully, one day you’ll realize that there is more to life experience than the number of years you spent living.

Really? Tell that to Harvard, Stanford, MIT, etc., and professional schools, like medical and law. The reason these institutions don’t just let in *anyone* who applies is because they know their programs are INTELLECTUALLY difficult.

Men and women are FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT. Intellect is just one of the ways we differ.

I’m not anti-anything. I’m just realist. I never said women weren’t capable of “anything intellectual” what I said is that men and women THINK DIFFERENTLY.

You must be very young and haven’t experienced much in life.

2. If your father is a Math professor, you should also know by now that grades are a poor indicator of intelligence. Practice something everyday and it’s not that hard to get the grades. Besides, undergraduate mathematics isn’t exactly the “hard stuff”. Anyone can learn them. As a matter of fact; attending lectures to grasp differential equations isn’t even necessary. Graduate school mathematics is according to me, the “advanced mathematics”.
Nevertheless, I can give a few examples of people who did poorly in school.
A) Darwin. He himself has written, “I was considered by all my masters and my father, a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard of intellect.”
B) Goddard, known for his research with liquid-fueled rockets. During his lifetime his ideas were often rejected and mocked at by his scientific peers who thought they were outrageous and impossible.
C) Robert Sternberg, a big name in psychology received a C in his first college introductory psychology class. His teacher apparently told him that, “there was already a famous Sternberg in psychology and it was obvious there would not be another.”
D) Edison’s teachers pretty much told him that he was “too stupid to learn anything.”
E) Benjamin Franklin, was not even a high school graduate.
F) Einstein, the greatest genius after Newton; failed his entrance exam to the prestigious Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
So, what importance do grades hold? Richard Feynman once said; “True secret to genius is in creativity, not technical mechanics.”
Anyone can solve math problems, but to create solutions is ingenuity.

Aptitude is created. I wouldn’t have the aptitude to fix things if it weren’t for me doing that over the years. Einstein wouldn’t be interested in physics if it weren’t for the compass he received as a gift from his father. For Orville and Wilbur Wright, it was their bicycle shop!
The simple truth of nature is not that men and women are intellectually different, but that people are not born as geniuses, criminals or ordinary men; circumstances make them who they are.

2. The media dwells on false imaging and controversial news. Such things sell! Cultural stereotype is propagated through the media. If there is one thing Nazism taught me; it is that media is very effective is propagating false tales, rumors and most of all, brainwashing the general population into a certain mindset. People are nothing but pawns. Hence, media is what makes people think men and women are ‘wired’ differently. Sitcoms, movies, advertisements, etc. all are all overflowing with stereotypical images.
Ex: 1) Pink is ascribed to girls while blue is to boys. 2) Men wearing is skirt is deemed abnormal but women wearing pants are not. 3) Being “emotional” is a “feminine” quality. Men are basically pictured to be “emotionless” robots.

3. I don’t know what group of peers you associate with. But if you really think women are basically incapable of anything intellectual, I’d just call that you’re ignorance.
Logically, it makes no sense that if women are incapable of learning. If so, why we would see such an incline in the number of women awarded medical, engineering and science degrees. If you don’t believe me, maybe statistics may help.
http://www.aps.org/programs/women/resources/statistics.cfm
If women are incapable of advanced learning, here’s another report. http://www.nacwaa.org/newsroom/Articles%20of%20Interest/353

Well, you are entitled to your own opinions. To me, I could care less about what you believe in. I gave you links and examples assuming that you perhaps only saw one side of the story.

I can only tell you this: It is absurd that you, despite all of the examples stated; still believe that men and women are fundamentally different in intellectual abilities. But, if you still rigidly believe in what you previously believed in, then it’s not my place to say anything more.

However, I’d like to end with one realization that I’ve come across after conversing with several anti-feminists like you. It’s that; men aren’t the misogynists. Women are.
Men aren’t the ones defining social systems and standards. Women are.
Men aren’t the ones making women fit into stereotypical norms of the society. Women are.
And, men are almost never the limitations for women in modern day American societies. Women are!
We basically pull each other down.

My father is a Math professor. He teaches advanced math, like Differential Equations. I’ve seen his student’s grades. With a couple RARE exceptions over the years, the men way out perform the women.

This isn’t because women are socialized to not be good at math—my generation was always assured we could “do anything” a man could—the reason is because women in general don’t have the aptitude for subjects like advanced math. Period.

The media isn’t what makes us think men and women’s brains are wired differently, men and women do.

It’s absurd to suggest that men and women are equally alike.

Real scientific analysis is hard to come across, especially with all the media propaganda. Hopefully this helps!

Good Luck.

I got into hard science due to my merit. I was definitely better than a lot of my fellow applicants since I had the opportunities and experiences several others did not have. I think I would be offended if someone undermined my effort and said that I wasn’t worthy of it because I am a woman, or that I was given that to meet certain numbers. To me, that definitely is active discrimination. Hey, if you didn’t get in, that’s your problem. Not mine.

Now how do I know there wasn’t any discrimination against sexes. Firstly, that was my university’s by-law. Secondly, I saw uneven proportions of male to female students in several programs and classes. The only program that was probably most egalitarian was chemistry and biology.

It’s only one of the reasons. Not the real reason. Perhaps private universities in America do that to uphold their image. I wouldn’t know about that, I’m Canadian.

I got into hard science due to my merit. I was definitely better than a lot of my fellow applicants since I had the opportunities and experiences several others did not have. I think I would be offended if someone undermined my effort and said that I wasn’t worthy of it because I am a woman, or that I was given that to meet certain numbers. To me, that definitely is active discrimination. Hey, if you didn’t get in, that’s your problem. Not mine.

Now how do I know there wasn’t any discrimination against sexes. Firstly, that was my university’s by-law. Secondly, I saw uneven proportions of male to female students in several programs and classes. The only program that was probably most egalitarian was chemistry and biology.

There are papers published regarding this topic that say men and women do think differently but the participants are from the North American society. That’s really not a good indicator for world-wise generalizations. The sample size used is not only small but also localized. That’s a poor way to form statistics.

On the other hand there are other studies stating men and women are the same and that lifestyle is the key determinant for such results.

Evolutionary anthropologists often used evolutionary reasonings like sexual dimorphism, etc.. to make their point and psychologists and social anthropologists used society based circumstantial evidences to make their claim.

Since my experience taught me it really is a matter of our choices, I side with the latter. Hence, I do not really place much emphasis on evolutionary theories except in the cases of biological macroscopic and microscopic evolution.

The other weird study based on evolution by evolutionary anthropologists state that “men are more sexually driven than women” and that it is because “they need to spread their seed”. Social anthropologists refuted that statement by providing evidences of the contrary from modern-day societies across the globe.
Women are according to social anthropologists “taught to underplay their sexuality for cultural reasons”. Sex drive (like pain threshold) varies from person to person and there are several men with lower sex drives and likewise several women with high sex drives.

This was just one example. I can give you several other contradictory papers and studies in other fields like medical sciences, physical sciences, etc.. Hence, you should know that papers are not always the final word, they just reflect someone’s findings that they thought was important enough to publish. They may or may not be real facts. (Ex: Eistein published his paper on general theory of relativity back then. All this while it was pushed to the back burner and the scientific community only accepted it recently when they realized that GPS’s would not work without that. They finally found a tangible proof to deem that paper scientific, factual and Nobel Prize worthy. Only Einstein was around to be appreciated. He died with that looming uncertainty.)

Besides, it seems like sexism to be judging applicants based on their sex. Does it really matter how many graduates are women or men? People are all different, and what appeals to us as individuals isn’t solely, or even significantly, determined by our sex or our gender.

Several years ago female students in engineering and physics was pretty much non-existent. Today we see more women entering such fields.
In India, 50% of the country’s engineering degrees are awarded to females. In US, not really. In the 1980′s, when my dad obtained his engineering degree, there were only 5 female graduates from the mechanical engineering department in his college.(My background is Indian, btw..)

I personally love nuclear and particle physics; but the reason is solely because I love reconstructing events and perceiving situations; the things I was taught while growing up. My interest only developed when my parents encouraged me to learn all aspects of life from using a hammer, fixing electrical circuits, washing the dishes, cooking, etc.. They didn’t restrict me to gender specific roles.

Girls pick dolls and boys pick toys with wheels in general, because as a kid you identify with your closest adult. I was a doll person when I was a kid; had at least 5 of them where ever I went. Why? Because my mom didn’t know how to fix shit! She cooked, cleaned and shopped. (At least that was all I saw her do. There is however more to her personality.)
Then I watched my dad fix stuff in and around the house and I thought it was cool. Since I showed interest, he taught me how.
How was he interested in fixing stuff? Well, my granddad did that in their family. And he spent most of his time with him.

I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed; but the more you admire someone, the more you want to be like them. Simple psychology! That’s all there is. The more attached you are to your mother, the more you identify with her and then soon enough follow suit. Likewise, the more attached you are to your father, the more like him you would want to be.

But say, someone interfered in between and told me that girls should follow their mothers’ lead and learn how to cook and clean; and that the fixing were all “boys stuff”, how would it have been? Surely it would’ve been different. At that tender age, you are naaive, and tend to believe everything everyone says. Once that is etched into your psyche you’ll put away all the “boys stuff” and try to become “girl-like”. To be honest, I’ve seen that happen.

Hence, gender is definitely created, not at all biological. I have personal experience to prove it. Whether you believe in it or not is not my concern, for I can only tell you; you have to do the convincing yourself.

And majority of the population is restricted to doing gender specific jobs. Now I’m not saying that it’s bad. But, merely that we make our choices in life, we are not born with them.