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You just restated what you said in the previous post and didn’t seem to understand what I said. In extremely high-end math competitions men have consistently done better (for what reason, I don’t know). That is nothing new.</p>
<p>USAMO qualifiers – the top 500, appx youth mathematicians in the country – represent one small sliver of MIT’s almost 20,000 applicants.</p>
<p>I don’t know in what world the statistics for USAMO can be extrapolated to the admissions pool at large. It’s like saying hey, look, Exeter sends half its class to Ivies, that must mean my school can also perform that well, or else they’re affirmatively preferring the other school.</p>
<p>I am pretty sure the bottom 50% of male applicants will be worse than the bottom 50% of female applicants.</p>
<p>On average, the two pools might be pretty similar, but the male pool will have a higher standard deviation (noted by Larry Summers), which means they might have more of the brilliant mathematicians, but they’ll also have more of the kids who have absolutely no shot.</p>
<p>More importantly, men are more likely to think that they will get in when they don’t stand a shot. Higher self-esteem is an empirically noted fact. And from my anecdotal experience I have seen many more men apply “for the hell of it” than women, who are much more methodical and organized about the whole thing.</p>
<p>Also, please note I’m not saying guys are better than girls at math. Just at the high school level they are disproportionately represented at the top percentiles. </p>
<p>It’s absolutely absurd to not believe MIT quoting that statistic you use, though.</p>