tk21769

>>Without equivocating, I would say that the general trend does indicate admitted males having lower stats

Data I've seen indicates that male and female college-bound seniors have very similar mean GPAs, but males have higher mean SATs (with a narrow advantage in CR and a wider one in Math).

Other data I've seen suggests that SAT scores are more strongly correlated with success in college for women than for men. I don't know if SAT scores also are more strongly correlated with high school grades among girls than among boys.

Sources:
http://www.ets.org/Media/Research/pd...n_allspach.pdf
SAT and Gender Differences

I'm sure there is much about these differences that is simply not well understood. However, I suspect attitudinal differences play a significant part in any higher incidence of males whose grades don't measure up to their test scores.

SDonCC

Just this morning, without having seen this thread, I was comparing the male / female admit rates at various schools. The differential at a few of these schools is astounding! Since I have boy / girl twins applying to schools this year, this is very much a good news / bad news scenario for us.

Hunt

It seems to me that if schools are taking active steps to maintain some level of gender balance, that this would mean that they have to take either lower-stat males or lower-stat females.
And if a highly selective school were truly gender-neutral, it seems to me that you would expect some significant fluctuation from year to year in the composition of your admitted pool. Is that the case in places that say they are gender-neutral?

ctyankee

It could be a bad news/bad news scenario depending on what they are interested in. Hopefully your son is interested in the humanities and your daughter is interested in math. Then ... problem solved.

SDonCC

well, my point was that on the one hand, the news that more boys are accepted makes me happy, but on the other, that fewer girls are accepted makes me sad! :-)