<p>“I have talked to one of the major feminists on campus, she will even comment that girls are not given preferance over guys.” You say it as you would expect the opposite. I don’t at all know the truth of her statements, but based on her status of ‘feminist,’ then I would expect her to be less likely to admit female preference.</p>
<p>ariesathena, instead of posting the most indirect of evidence, why not post something direct?
Women having higher scores on average does not indicate anything. If you admit from two groups on the same standards, their proportions will vary by their numbers and their merits. So, in effect, there is some ‘natural’ proportion. One can alter this proportion by changing the standards for one group or another. Specifically in this case, women do score higher, but what if they only make up 20% of the applicant pool but 50% of the enrollment (as a hypothetical). Their over-representation is due to their over-achievement, relative to males. If they marginally over-achieve, then they should be, if equal standards are applied, similarly marginally over-represented. I read somewhere the national average for female proportion is 15%. I sincerely doubt that women score so high as to achieve an enrollment rate of 46%. To be sure, some colleges attract females more than others. But female preference may still lurk. And after all, colleges, promote affirmative action type policies to ameliorate a relative under-representation of one group or another.</p>
<p>The SAT’s underprediction for females is only 21 points according to my link. Pinker considers the underprediction as due to the combination of greater conscientiousness among women and more grade inflated classes (ie. humanities versus engineering). That’s why, as he says, the College Board advises that it be combined with high school grades, so that the underprediction of females and overprediction of males, is evened out (as high school grades I assume, overpredict female performance and underpredict male performance).</p>