Assuming that the men and women were on the whole equally well qualified (and there is no evidence to the contrary), the difference in admission rates looks like a strong piece of evidence to show that men and women are treated differently in the admissions procedure. The university seemed to prefer men, 44 to 35.
Each major did its own admissions to graduate work. They looked at the data for each major separately to identify the departments that discriminated against women. A puzzle appeared. Major by major there did not seem to be any general bias against women. On the whole, if there was any bias it ran against the men.
Here is the data for the six largest departments. These accounted for over one-third of the total number of applicants. The data was typical of the whole campus -- except that the bias looks worse.
| Men | Women | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dept | Numb. Applicants | Admitted | Numb. Applicants | Admitted |
| A | 825 | 62% | 108 | 82% |
| B | 560 | 63% | 25 | 68% |
| C | 325 | 37% | 593 | 34% |
| D | 417 | 33% | 375 | 35% |
| E | 191 | 28% | 393 | 24% |
| F | 373 | 6% | 341 | 7% |
| Total | 2,691 | 45% | 1,835 | 30% |
Observe:
The above table compares 12 admissions rates. One way to understand this
data better is to use a weighted average of the admissions
rates, the weights being the total number of applicants (male and
female) to each department. To compute this we first compute the total
number of applicants for each of these six departments:
(.62×933 + .63×585 + .37×918 + .33×792 + .28×584 + .06×714) / 4,526 = 39%
Similarly, the weighted average admission rate for the women works out to be 43%:
(.82×933 + .68×585 + .34×918 + .35×792 + .24×584 + .07×714) / 4,526 = 43%
In these computations, the weights are the same for the men and women. These averages suggest that if anything, the admissions processed against the men.
This was based on the article:
B. Bickel, E. Hammel, & J.W. O'Connell, "Is there a sex bias in graduate
admissions?", Science, Vol. 187 (1975), pp.398--404.