A Study of Abilities of Women Students Entering the Colleges of Letters and Science and Applied Arts at the University of California, Los Angeles

Abstract

THE PROBLEM investigated was to find wheth er there are statistically significant differences between the College of Applied Arts and Letters and Science women students at the University of California, Los Angeles, on nine selected charac teristics as measured by four standardized tests. 1. The A. C. E., a measure of intellectual po tential, on two dimensions quantitative and lin guistic. 2. The Cooperative Reading Test, a measure of vocabulary, reading rate and comprehension. 3. The Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Te st, a measure of ability to evaluate the abstract. 4. The College Qualification Test, a measure of what science and social science information stu dents have acquired. The sample of entering women tested in the fall of 1959 included approximately 311 women stu dents in the College of Applied Arts and 477 in the College of Letters and Science, a total of 788 stu dents. How are these women students different or how are they alike in their patterns of intelligence, reading abilities, abstract and critical thinking, and science and social science information? Can these patterns, if they exist, be identified in part at least, by available, standardized psychometric instruments ? It is to answer these two general questions that this investigation was made. Only the top 15 percent of the high-school stu dents are admitted to the University; one cannot generalize our results since a selective factor is operating. The American Council on Education Psycholo gical Examination (A. C. E. ) is designed to meas ure scholastic potential, the ability to handle col lege work. The quantitative score reflects the fa cility with which the student can acquire and mani pulate mathematical concepts. It indicates mas FRANCES OBST