[Mikell Taylor]

I have a sneaking suspicion I know which college you're talking about.

Whether or not it is the college you're talking about, having been on the other side of it doing interviews and discussing applicants with the admission committee, I do know that college admissions are not a straightup matter of academic records and extracurriculars -- your essays, interviews, recommendations, etc play in a lot, especially in small college communities. So for you to compare resumes side by side and say "Well, it must have been because you're a girl" may be unfair.

That said, I know "affirmative action" *does* happen in many cases, whether it's college admission or hiring or nominating Supreme Court Justices. That's a much longer conversation to have that's not just limited to gender. I also think it's a different matter than "pressuring" girls into engineering -- one thing we saw in admission at my college was that the women who applied, while fewer, were far more self-selective than the men; they had, on average, higher test scores and GPAs and had often had a good deal of extracurricular involvement in science and engineering-related activities. If there was any pressuring going on, it had happened earlier than at the college admission level.