Why Studying in an All-Female College is a Bad Idea

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I got the chance to select an American college to study my civil engineering major. I had the option to choose from a diverse list of one hundred colleges, on which female colleges were included. Once I told my advisor I was interested on leadership and engineering she promptly specified I should apply to a specific female college. It looked interesting, I got amazed by the fact women were being scientists and great thinkers without the help of males. That situation was the opposite from my countries beliefs. Women was not capable for engineering or anything related to math.

As the research and enthusiasm about this special college continued, I got to realize something that completely influenced my decision. How I was going to deal with some many girls every day? We tend to very competitive among each other. I was going to study engineering, a major that deals with lots of male professionals, hence I did not see how I was going to develop my communication skills if I did never study with males’ classmates. I felt those communication skills were going to lack from my resume. Hence, I got to understand that students from female colleges are negatively affected on their education and behavior because they get an idealistic and hostile educational atmosphere.

Humans are naturally competitive according to the competitive arousal model (Melhotra, 2010). We want to contest and win. Therefore we can analyze how this model also applies to a specific gender group in an academic environment. Female colleges carries with the consequence of promoting a physical and academic competition among their students. According to article “Body Image in a Singles Sex” (Spence, 2013), there is a high percentage of female students concerned about their ...

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