Harvard’s male draw stands out nationally. Overall enrollment in higher education for men has declined since 1992 and federal projections show the percentage of men in college will shrink to 42 percent by 2010, according to a 2000 article in Time Magazine.

Warren Research Professor of the History of American Education at the Graduate School of Education Patricia A. Graham says the national trend is due to changing expectations of adult women.

“Basically this is largely a consequence of adult women now having greater choices for their lives, and boys who may be bright but who are disinterested in school not continuing their educations,” Graham, a former director of the National Institute of Education, writes in an e-mail.

Graham says that parents also have also changed expectations.

“Parents now generally believe that daughters deserve higher education as well as their sons, a view that was not prevalent throughout American society even 30 years ago,” Graham writes.

McGrath Lewis says that the admissions office has seen lingering evidence that families have been slightly more reluctant to send their daughters away to college.

“The high yield on women [this year] is an encouraging sign that talented women seem every more able to take advantage of great opportunities!” she writes.

ON CAMPUS

McGrath Lewis say while hometown location has factored into acceptance decisions of women, academic and extracurricular interests are not very distinguishable by gender.

“People think women have some other criteria to choose a college, but we do a lot of follow up and differences don’t vary between gender,” she says.

Once on campus, females seem to be as present in leadership positions as men are. This semester women are at the helm of the Black Students Association, The Crimson and, for the first time, Harvard Hillel.

There has also been a proliferation of female social groups on campus. This year a new sorority, Kappa Kappa Gamma, joined the two existing campus sororities, Kappa Alpha Theta and Delta Gamma. Other female social clubs—many of which have been established in the last few years—include Isis, Seneca, Bee, Pleiades and Sabliere Society.

Karin C. Sheieh ’05, president of Women in Business (WIB), also says interest in her organization has increased. She says WIB has seen the number of compers double from 20 to 40 in the past few years.

“I definitely hope this trend goes to the business world,” Sheieh says. “There aren’t many women in top management, yet I know many girls who will make excellent managers and executives.”

In the classroom, however, there are still gender disparities within certain academic departments and in the concentration choices of men and women.