<p>Ha, ha, Cangel. I agree. We went to gathering Thanksgiving weekend with friends that have daughters who are my nearly 18 year old son’s age. They too are looking at colleges. I was blown away over the maturity difference. Granted, my son is young for his age, but he is a bit older than most seniors in highschools and that one year differential does compensate when he is with other senior boys. But with the girls, forget it. </p>
<p>And he is not the only one. I took him and some old friends from elementary school (they all went to different highschools) out for dinner one night. They were a good looking group of boys and caught the eyes of many young ladies as this is a favorite highschool weekend hangout. They did not even look up at the girls. BUt funnier yet was the excerpt I hear from their conversation: they were discussing attributes of various Pokemon characters. </p>
<p>I think my son writes well, in term of grammar, clarity, form, vocabulary, and his writing sample for the SAT was graded pretty high. But the difference in sophistication of ideas showed up so clearly when I was looking at some essays displayed on some idea. No names given, but I could pick out the males and females. I checked and was dead on. It scared me how the maturity was so clear. </p>
<p>The girls seem to do better in bio as far as sciences go, about equal in chem with a slight nod to the boys. When it comes to physics, the boys definitely rule. The same with the advanced math, though the earlier stuff the girls seem to do better. Also the girls seem to make less careless, sloppy type mistakes but have a more difficult time with actually understanding how to solve the more difficult problems. My son seems to have an easy time in math, even advanced calc, but gets killed in not writing down steps, and carelessness usually a result of sloppiness.</p>