[2] Manson was born on July 15, 1893, in Baltimore, Maryland.
Educated at Goucher College, where she received her AB in 1915, and Columbia University, where she received her AM in 1919, she went on to earn a Ph.D. from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in 1923.
Manson then moved to Northwestern University, where she was a psychology professor and the director of personnel research.
Her research focused on selection techniques, differential psychology, and personnel research[2] and included statistics on women's occupations, earnings, and vocational interests.
She was a highly cited researcher in her era.