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point scale in which the responses indicating greater self-confidence were higher and the
responses indicating lower self-confidence were lower.
Rowan students – both males and females – are more confident that engineering is the
right major for them than are University of Washington students (Table IIH-1). They also
express more confidence in their abilities in their engineering, physics and chemistry
abilities. Their confidence in their mathematical abilities is similar, and they are about as
likely to be overwhelmed by the fast pace and heavy workload of their classes (note that
on this last question, lower scores, indicating that they disagreed, expressed greater self-
confidence). While their confidence in their overall academic ability seems to be a little
lower, it should be noted that Rowan students are asked to rate themselves to the average
engineering student in their class, while University of Washington students were simply
asked how confident they were in their academic ability.
It should also be noted that there tends to be a bigger difference between the
University of Washington male and female students in their self-confidence, with the
males having higher self-confidence than the females. The gender differences among the
Rowan students are smaller.
These comparisons suggest that female engineering students at Rowan are expressing
higher engineering self-confidence than female engineering students at the University of
Washington, and that the traditional gender gap in self-confidence is somewhat narrowed
at Rowan.
IIH-268