I was told a story about someone who applied to a school of engineering somewhere or other, in the latter part of the 1950s.

She had a sterling high school record, but they wrote a rejection letter explaining that they already had a woman attending the institution.

The punch line, as it were, as I recall it, was that "a woman" did not mean one undergraduate woman, but just one, period.

So, she went to a much less prestigious and well-known school, majored in math, and ended up being a programmer instead of an engineer.

I am not sure if she was bitter about it.