Thank you for the comment, it slipped my mind while making this graph because I code these graphs manually and I forgot to implement that feature. I'll do that in the future.

It is supposedly rampant every year at our university, so faculty heads and professors often write emails or perform speeches about it, especially to freshman.

"Imposter syndrome" or more accurately "confidence in ability" is a very big problem at my university since the software engineering and computer science programs are so competitive. It's the 1st or 2nd most competitive program in all of Canada.

For last year's graduating software engineering class:

The median salary was 120k USD plus 23k USD in stock/options and 29k USD signing bonus.

The average salary was 155k USD plus 70k USD in stock/options and 46k USD signing bonus.

No student graduated without a job, with only 6% earning less than 80k USD (75th percentile of individual income in the USA), and nearly half in the 90th percentile.

That said, it would be interesting to see how confidence in ability changed over the years from freshman to graduating classes.

Both are valid spellings

Yes I agree, any generalization would require a multi-university survey

Good point, thanks

Thank you for the comment.

This was completed within the first week (during orientation week) before any proper curriculum was taught. There were many speeches and emails about "imposter syndrome" from faculty heads and professors though, as it seems to be a significant problem at my university every year.

The male:female ratio here was 3:2 so I would assume it is probably less likely for harassment to happen.

The ratio was 3:2 male:female here

Unfortunately (or fortunately), the mean. median. and mode of those who were admitted into my program was 97-98% because the program's so competitive.

That would be an interesting statistic to compare in another less competitive program where marks may be more varied though — like business or the sciences.

The fact that there were only students with high school averages in the 90s is because the software engineering program at my university is incredibly competitive.

At a 93% average, you have a 5% probability of admission.

The mean, median, and mode of all high school averages of those admiited into the program was between 97 and 98%. This statistic includes everyone as it was released by university admissions themself.

Since the surveyed mean above is also in the range of 97-98%, and 80% of people responded, I don't think that type of bias should be an issue.

This survey had a male to female ratio of 3:2 (which is the same as the composition of the software engineering program at my university). Yes that last part sounds quite interesting.

Yes, thank you for the comment. I agree confidence level would have been a better word choice.

No incentives, but we email this 50 question survey out to freshman at the beginning of the term. We also get our department leads and professors to send out an email to everyone.

The ratio of men to women was roughly 3:2

I've provided the mean and the std deviation at the top of the chart for each number by gender, so you don't have to rely solely on the graph which as you mention may have a few flaws.

Thank you for the comment. I agree "confidence level" would have been a better way of wording it than "imposter syndrome".

The reason I used that word is just because it's the word our university faculty and professors chose to use to describe "confidence level".

Our admissions into our university faculty is extremely competitive in Canada, even surpassing a few American schools, and they see a wave of incoming freshman slowly lose their hope and confidence in themself, so professors often give speeches about "imposter syndrome".

The 2 questions were worded similar to my comment above:

Please provide your high school average (to 1 decimal place)

Rate your imposter syndrome! 0 = I was bred for this program 10 = I think the admissions committee got my application mixed up with someone else's

You make a fair point in the last bit. This survey was sent out at the very beginning of the term, before any university curriculum was taught, so the conclusion still holds — but the reason for that could be that women in software engineering generally enter university with less coding experience than men in thr same situation. Anyways, sounds interesting, I might dig through the data and make another graph later.

Data Source: A 50 question survey that my team and I conducted at my university. Around 80% of those surveyed responded. The male:female ratio of those surveyed was 3:2, which was roughly equal to the gender ratio of respondents (also 3:2).

Survey Methodology: For this particular question, survey participants were asked to provide their high school average to 1 decimal place and rate their imposter syndrome on a scale of 0 to 10 (0 being nonexistent or extremely low, 10 being extremely high).

Tools Used: Google Forms for data collection, Node.js for data cleaning/formatting/analysis, React.js for data visualization. Added additional labels and statistics using Affinity Designer. Took about 300 lines of JavaScript code in total.

Based on the graph, it seems that women face far greater imposter syndrome than men, when starting a Software Engineering degree, despite having similar high school averages.

Questions and criticisms welcome.

sankeymatic.com

Yeah but it was so unorganized and I barely did anything except a bit of work making a few React components, so I would barely consider it one.

Not sure I understand what you mean. Before 2021, I interned at a messy pre-seed startup that never really got far. The 2021 job search led to me interning at a startup with 100+ employees and around $100M in funding raised.

no, I didn't

If they mention I'm currently a top candidate during the interview, I ask them about product/team placement, salary expectations, and benefits. They are usually flexible on the first two. This is when I mention I'm interviewing at XX other places offering $YY/hr so I try to push them 20-40% upwards in terms of pay depending on what they've already offered. It's not really any different from full-time offer negotiations.

Ah yeah that would explain it. Civil's tough — it has one of the lowest rates of ppl successfully getting internships, compared to 13 other engineering programs at my university