<p>It’s not just a question of demographics. More young women are applying to colleges than young men, and this is a cause for great concern among educators at all levels. It has been suggested (and the debate rages) that a number of educational reforms that were implemented within the last 20 years or so to make K-12 education more accessible to girls ended up putting boys at a disadvantage (e.g., group work, describing how one arrived at an answer in math, etc).</p>
<p>I think girls in high school have higher stats relative to boys because they tend to do their homework and study for tests. A lot of boys in high school are late bloomers. In order to admit close to 50/50 boy/girl ratio, adcoms need to lower their standards. </p>
<p>D1 jokingly said that her guy friends got it figured out…lets just play video games and hang out, as long as we all have lousy grades, they are going to have to admit some of us anyway. Whereas girls are just super competitive and kiiling themselves in the process.</p>
<p>I think that another factor is that a higher percentage of girls go on to college than boys. My son’s large public hs publishes a list every June of every senior and their plans - all 650 of them. This is a hs that sends 90%+ on to a 4-year college. But every year - there are some boys going into the military or going straight into the workforce. It is incredibly rare to see the same for a girl.</p>
<p>quilah’s stats say a lot-- the boys just aren’t applying to the LAC in anywhere near the numbers the girls are. So of course it’s more competitive for girls.</p>
<p>A friend had a girl go through the college thing and her son a year later. Similar kinds of smaller liberal arts colleges. D had stronger stats, but S got in more places and got more merit aid. The mom felt it was completely the boy advantage.</p>
<p>I will NOT be telling my son about this thread! I still have him convinced that he is going to have to continue to work hard and make A’s in his AP classes and close to 2000 on the SAT/30 on the ACT to get in. :o)</p>
<p>S applied to schools that were formerly all women, he did quite well with his acceptances! At one Accepted Students Day, I looked around at the crowd sipping coffee & munching on muffins & remarked “There are mostly girls here.” He gave me a thumbs up & just smiled. So far he is enjoying it, his freshmen class is 33% male. :)</p>
<p>Boys seem to have an edge at liberal arts colleges, but girls have an edge at tech schools.</p>
<p>At universities that include a variety of programs, including both liberal arts and engineering, these factors may cancel out.</p>
<p>Not only do girls have a (big?) advantage in Engineering-tech programs, but also undergrad biz. (btw: LACs with business/engineering tend to attract more male applicants…)</p>
<p>More girls apply to colleges - and those that have the selectivity stats to hold themselves at a 50/50 ratio might reject or defer or WL more qualified girls than they do qualified boys. However, that is not to say the standards are actually lower.</p>
<p>As for HS GPA… I don’t buy the argument that boys don’t have to work hard or can play video games while girls do the heavy lifting. While I don’t have quantitative date to back me up, at our independent private school it is true that girls might have a SLIGHTLY higher GPA, BUT the boys earn higher stats on standardized tests, including SAT, ACT and the AP. Additionally, for the last 10 years running, more boys are NMFs - almost two to one- than girls. Therefore, I conclude (with no real factual study to back me up), that girls may be favored in the classroom when it comes to daily grades/homework or they’re just more anal about grades in general.</p>
<p>The bottom line is… the competition among boys getting into elite colleges is not as stiff as it is for girls, but I don’t believe it’s about lowering standards as much as it about sheer number of female to male applicants. And while there are over 50 all women schools, i think there are only three all male colleges in the US. And as has been pointed out… for those areas of study that may be thought to be male heavy, the girls have the advantage. An English major at a CLA probably not so much. :)</p>
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<p>That´s exactly it. To get higher GPA, it is consistently putting in more effort. To get high test scores, it is a one off and it demonstrates ability. In my post, I never said boys had lower ability, but maybe not as much effort put into their school work in high school. More often than not, boys tend to catch up and do just as well, if not better, than girls in college.</p>
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<p>Well, going by that logic, you could also just conclude that boys are favored on standardized tests…which I believe is borne out by factual studies.</p>
<p>On a more serious note, the boys should go to college. During the current recession, the unemployment rate for the population at large is hovering around 10%, higher if you care to add in the discouraged who are no longer counted, but the unemployment rate among the college educated is only at 5%.</p>
<p>“Factual study” made me giggle.</p>
<p>After S was accepted into my alma mater, I met an admissions officer at an accepted students function. She told me they were “fortunate” at alma mater that they’ve never had to consider gender in admissions, somehow it just always works out pretty close to 50/50 (this is a unique school, a LAC with a large engineering dept). Which leads me to believe that other colleges DO consider it.</p>
<p>D’s college’s common data set shows that last year they admitted 56% of the men who applied, but only 44% of the women. They still ended up with a freshman class that was 60% female.</p>
<p>So yes, I think at a lot of colleges its “easier” to get in if you’re male. Probably because more women than men are applying to college, especially LACs, and they want to keep their gender ratios from getting too far out of whack.</p>
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<p>Also, boys are more likely to get into trouble than girls. Can’t go to college if you are in jail or juvenile hall.</p>
<p>from what i just read, the standards are only different because more women than men apply to LACs. it’s not that men aren’t smart enough, it’s that not enough apply. we can look at engineering/tech schools where it’s 60/40 favoring males, like caltech, where females undoubtedly get the upper hand. why is the ratio like this? i’m going to assume that it’s because not as many women apply to engineering schools. in the end, women and men inherently favor different things, and each will be benefited by applying to the thing that they are typically not attracted to.</p>
<p>If it matters, they tried to put every single boy in my first grade class on ritalin because we were too hyperactive. About 10 boys of the 12 boys went on it, but no girls did. I didn’t though, which I thank my dad for. I don’t remember this really well, but my dad was telling me about it the other day. Anyway, I think it does show that school is set up against males early on. That may explain the lower GPA’s for males.</p>
<p>Also, think of all of the teachers you have ever had. How many of those were male? Probably not half. </p>
<p>Anyway, I just thought I could add an interesting point. I’m not going to argue one way or the other.</p>
<p>In our HS, it does appear that girls have a higher gpa – 7 of the top 10 are female. OTOH, guys take at least one harder, senior class: more than 2/3rds of the students in Calc BC are guys. Nearly all of AP Comp Sci are guys. AP English Lit is about 50/50.</p>
<p>How it all adds up, I do not know. But UW gpa’s can be not what they seem.</p>
<p>[Women</a> More Likely Than Men to Graduate College at 22 - Real Time Economics - WSJ](<a href=“http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/01/29/women-more-likely-than-men-to-graduate-college-at-22/]Women”>http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/01/29/women-more-likely-than-men-to-graduate-college-at-22/)</p>
<p>No. Really. Less men are going to college than women; less are graduating high school; and, when they do go to college, less men are graduating. It’s a real problem, actually, and probably a “good” thing admiissions committees are making it easier for the ones who do want to go to get in.</p>
<p>From the article:
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<p>I may be a mom of boys only, but I’m also a teacher. The boys are just as smart as the girls. It’s just that, in my experience, girls are teacher-pleasers while the boys don’t care as much for school. The counter argument to the Kenyon editorial cited on page 1 here is this, by John Tierney, written in 2006. His point is that boys need equal attention, but I’m still not sure that is happening:</p>
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<p>I cannot believe that “random” admissions (ignoring all gender) results in a class of 60/40 by happy circumstance. It’s more like there are more women competing, plain and simple and as I’ve seen enough on CC, there is a crap shoot about college admissions that we simple analyze to death. Most highly selective schools are pretty darn close to 50/50. And as we"ve seen here… a lot of the stats are technically indistinguishable. So it makes sense that if you have 1000 girls applying for 100 spots and 800 boys applying for open spots that even if EVERYTHING else were perfectly the same, acceptance would be higher for males.</p>
<p>And no… it’s not that I think girls work harder (being anal and working harder aren’t necessarily one and the same. :), but I do think teachers in general favor girls.</p>