<p>This has probably been addressed, but I'm curious as to people's experiences with this. I have noticed without exception that the top 10 of our local high school classes are predominantly female. There was only 1 boy in the top 10 at my son's HS this year. Our local private school had just 2 boys out of 9 in their honors group.</p>
<p>So is it much easier for boys to get into selective schools? When I see m/f ratios of 50:50 or 49:51, I wonder how the schools manage to compose the classes.</p>
<p>It depends on the school. For most highly selective schools, it helps very slightly to be a male. The difference is most commonly insigificant, however.</p>
<p>At some schools, such as principally engineering and science oriented institutions, it is a significant admissions advantage to be a female.</p>
<p>Personally, I have not experienced the female dominance in class ranking. Almost the opposite exists at my school; only 2 girls rank in the top ten in our class.</p>
<p>Even if it is more common for females to have higher class ranks (which I am uncertain about), it may be somewhat mitigated by the fact that more males attain very high SAT scores.</p>
<p>From my personal experience, of the 6 different elementary schools, 2 different high schools, and all the schools that friends/family went to, the top 10 students for each grade at every single one of those schools has been male.</p>
<p>There are more females above average, but all the top students are always male. This is reflected in the international olympiads.</p>
<p>It depends on the major - when my son and I were visiting Johns Hopkins last year - during the admissions talk, the counselor actually said they are really trying to get more girls to apply to engineering / sciences. And if you look at the schools that are heavy into engineering, the girls acceptance rate is much higher than boys. It is just a fact that less girls apply and the school has to try and even out the class or even try and increase the female enrollment. The girl has the hook in this instance.</p>
<p>“There are more females above average, but all the top students are always male.”</p>
<p>This general of roughly similar averages but more males at the top end is reflected both in the results of SAT tests and IQ tests. I wonder why.</p>
<p>What do you mean you wonder why, imbecile? Do yourself a favor and refrain from making insinuations which dim our perceptions of your intelligence.</p>
<p>“What do you mean you wonder why, imbecile?”</p>
<p>You pose a legimate question, only to follow it up with an offensive conclusion based on the assumption of worst intention. My original comment was made in sincerity; there was no intended insinuation of any potential offense.</p>
<p>I have corresponded with Ju_liaa about the misunderstanding and will reiterate here that I apologize that I imprudently used a phrase akin to one commonly employed with sarcastic intention, as my intention was genuine. I did not mean to insinuate, nor do I believe, that one gender is superior.</p>
<p>Ok, this is a touchy topic, so I’m gonna preface my comment by saying I don’t mean to offend anyone, and feel free to disagree with anything I say.</p>
<p>I think that there are more males at the very top and bottom of the bell curve, with most females situated safely in the middle. So, in my experience from high school, the top 5-10% might be male-dominated, but overall the top 50% is female dominated.</p>
<p>As for why? I find that males are more often encouraged / expected to be at the top of their class (and keep in mind, I followed a pretty math / science heavy track). Females, on the other hand, are more often expected to do decently, go to college, and then find and husband and start a family. Because of this, they do above average, but not as well as their male counterparts who are aiming for high paying jobs and great success.</p>
<p>This also leads to a very self-selective group of females applying to top colleges - only those who have really great academic records and really believe in themselves, those who went against the grain in high school, are going to be applying to top schools (again, taking more about science / engineering fields). Males, on the other hand, are expected to apply to top colleges, and so they will even with slightly lower stats. This leads to the female application pool being slightly more qualified, thus accounting for the higher female acceptance rate.</p>
<p>This is the truth, but in this day and age, people are too scared to admit differences between different groups of people, and attempt to cover everything with fuzzy wuzzy politically correctedness BS, saying “everyone’s the same”, blah blah blah.</p>