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There may or may not be more women this year than last year who get scholarships. They try to attract more women where they can in order to increase the selection pool. This is exactly what corporations do... increase the pool of qualified diverse candidates. Nevertheless a scholarship is awarded on merit and not gender. One earns it, and it's competitive.
Yeah, that makes sense. I was thinking about colleges and how being a woman applying for say MIT where they have a 35%ish female population, that it could be a plus on your application. I don't doubt that merit comes first, but I wonder if being a female is just a little bonus the board may take into consideration. That probably should have been my question: How much do they take gender into consideration in the scholarship process?
I have a son and daughter who both received AFROTC and NROTC scholarships (my daughter got an ISR but had better grades than my son). And my daughter got into MIT (along with Cal, Notre Dame, and Harvey Mudd). Did being female help? I don't think so. I think it was more so due to having a more holistic application package and backstory that set her apart from other candidates - in other words, she did more than just STEM. She did debate, student senate, cross country, track, got selected to selective summer programs (e.g., Notre Dame's all-expense paid summer seminar for leaders). She actually had no STEM clubs and only one STEM-related activity.
As with most selective colleges, when MIT compares equal students, they may look at gender to help round out a broad-based student body. But, they will also look at where the person is from geographically, socio economic class, culture, and what they can contribute to the university (this is seen in essays that are required to be well written and written at a level above what you submit to your local state college), etc. (Some other selective schools will also consider family donations, are they the son of a Senator or a President of a foreign country or a UN ambassador, or are they the star of Harry Potter films, etc.)
To be honest, most males who don't get in probably don't make the cut because of the quality of subjective things, like the essays or letter of recs (these also need to be at a level higher than what is written for most colleges - the writer needs to specifically quantify the student's standing, demonstrates a knowledge of the student's interests and resume accomplishments, etc.).
I'm sure ROTC is similar - if there are two equal candidates and there is a deficiency of qualified females, they'll probably look at the female.