<p>Every year, my school releases a "top 30" list of students. It is normally >2/3 female.</p>
<p>Weenie, I doubt that girls are applying to more schools than boys. In fact, based on what I read here at CC, I'd say it is just the opposite - boys tend to apply to more schools than the girls (of course, that's not a scientific sample).</p>
<p>We are finally seeing the effect of so many out of wedlock births. When a girl is born to a single mother, the girl grows up with a female role model. When a boy is born to a single mother, the boy rarely grows up with a male role model. A male role model is crucial to boys when they are in middle school and high school and are much bigger and stronger than their mothers. Another (small but significant) cause is the implementation of Title IX. Many colleges dropped male athletic teams so that the number of male and female athletic teams would be equal.</p>
<p>Here's something interesting - girls seem to have somewhat different reasons for going to college than boys. These results are based on a UCLA survey of 288,000 plus of this year's college freshman. One of the questions asked was "What are your top reasons for deciding to go to college?"</p>
<p>To learn more about things that interest me
Men 72%
Women 80.7%</p>
<p>To get training for a specific career
Men 70.1%
Women 78.2%</p>
<p>To be able to make more money
Men 72.9
Women 67.8</p>
<p>To gain a general education and appreciation of ideas
Men 57.6
Women 70.2</p>
<p>To prepare myself for graduate or professional school
Men 49.8
Women 62.2</p>
<p>To find my purpose in life
Men 44%
Women 48%</p>
<p>Another question asked the reasons considered very important in selecting the college they are attending.</p>
<p>College has a very good academic reputation
Men 52.1%
Women 60.4%</p>
<p>Graduates get good jobs
Men 45.3
Women 52.1</p>
<p>A visit to the campus
Men 32.7%
Women 44.1</p>
<p>Wanted to go to a colege about the size of this one
Men 28.2
Women 41.8</p>
<p>It is true, particularly in LACs. If you look at the sex balance in schools, there are definitely more girls in a number of schools and though they may not be striving for a 50/50 situation, most schools get a bit nervous when the numbers start going below 60/40. But girls have the edge on a number of school, particularly those heavy in tech courses like Case, CMU, Lehigh and in engineering, computer science type programs.</p>
<p>And, here's another question - survey respondents were asked to rate themselves on a variety of characteristics. Here's the percentage that rated themselves above average or highest 10 percent in some of those characteristics:</p>
<p>Academic ability - Men 73.1% Women 66.6%
Leadership ability - Men 63% Women 57%
Intellectual self-confidence - Men 66.4%, Women 50.4
Mathematical ability Men 54.9 Women 36.8
Writing ability Men 44.6 Women 47.9</p>
<p>I thought these results are interesting. While we are talking about males not "achieving" in high school at the same rate as females, the males themselves obviously see themselves in a more positive light than the females in terms of academics. Any thoughts on this?</p>
<p>It certainly sounds to me that girls haven't yet gotten the message that they are achieving more academically than males, if indeed they are.</p>
<p>My son, 13, rushes through homework and then takes 45 minute showers.... Typical.</p>
<p>An interesting trend at my school is that the vals/sals are more often men than women, but women completely dominate the top 10% of the class. Of course this is probably because they take all the AP classes available (not many girls here take Physics), while many girls take some of the AP classes, usually outnumbering guys in APs other than Physics and Calculus. </p>
<p>Of course, our guidance councellors are somewhat to blame for this too. They don't recommend the toughest schedule to anybody, convinced that having more than 3 APs a year is "incredibly tough", and think you have to be a child prodigy to take all honors/AP classes. When I switched high schools from a crappy private school after freshman year they convinced me to take electricial trades because I had an otherwise "tough load" - I could have gotten one of my real classes out of the way instead.</p>
<p>As for the M/F ratio in colleges, I know that females, especially OOSers, are slightly less likely to be admitted (60/40 ratio). I think a big reason for the relatively smaller male population at Carolina is a lack of engineering, and most of the people who want to do engineering and stay in-state go to NC State (where the ratio is 45/55, which is significantly better than a couple decades ago).</p>
<p>SBMom - I am envisioning a new thread in the cafe. Haven't totally worked it out yet. Something along the lines of which gender really spends more time in the bathroom? Probably too much denial going on in the y-chromosome gang to get a true answer.</p>
<p>This is a newly published book that surveys the scientific data regarding the differences between girls and boys. This includes differences in eye anatomy, the ear, brain anatomy, development, brain function etc. Pertinent to this discussion is the difference in the response to stress. Males release epinephrine while females release acetylcholine. In the metabolic MRI a male to whom a stressful stimulus is applied will have increased brain blood flow. Under the same conditions female subjects will have decreased flow.<br>
So what happens when we take a group of adolescents and give them a timed test and tell them that the test(SAT or ACT) will very likely determine a large part of their entire future? I think the results are predictable: the boys will perform at a higher level than they do on their regular school work and the girls will perform at a lower level.
I always wondered how we beat the girls, who obviously knew more than we did.</p>
<p>At our public hs here were the m/f breakdowns for the top 25 graduates for the past 3 years:15-m/10-f, 12-m/13-f, 9-m/16-f for a total of 36-m/39-f. We live in a very middle class suburban district with a hs enrollment of about 1000 and an average SAT score of about 1090.</p>
<p>Originaloog, It's nice to see you back again. I've missed you. :)</p>
<p>jmmom - love the 5 sentence thing. Ditto for my son. He also used that line of thinking for thank you notes. We told him they had to be at least 3 sentences long - and they were. And the first and third sentences were always the same: thank you for the gift. How thrilled am I that they've added a writing section to the SAT?</p>
<p>As for showers, my son takes 45 minute showers as well. Of course, only 5 of those minutes are actually in the shower (I swear his hair hasn't been washed in years). After he turns the shower on in the morning to get it warmed up, he lays back down - and proceeds to fall asleep for 40 minutes!</p>
<p>I have sophomore and junior boys and have endured years of teacher conferences during which the teachers, invariably with sour expressions on their faces, have informed us that our sons haven't completed all of their homework, which has hurt their final grades. Then, as surely as night follows day, the teacher and my ex-husband turn and gaze disapprovingly at me. Year after year after year after - well, you get the idea.<br>
Some years I have ineffectually protested that if my sons understand the material, why penalize them for homework completions? I even argued the point with the headmaster of my kids' school at a morning parents' meeting and he was disdainful and talked about "equity" issues if the kids who did well on tests but not on homework were allowed to get a pass on that issue. [He has a young son and an older, conscientious girl. I wish him the karma he deserves with his son's homework as his son grows older.]<br>
I argued to the dean of students that the school is supposed to prepare their students for college, and, if college grades are based solely on tests and papers, why can't the upper high school grades segue into some sort of similar system?<br>
And now I find, after years of being made to feel that I am the only one stuggling with this issue, that this behavior is common with boys the country over?<br>
I feel two things: relieved that I'm not the only one, and disconcerted that no teacher ever had the kindness to point out that this was a common issue among boys. My school also yanked the older one out of accelerated math years ago becaue of homework issues and that doesn't look so great for college apps. [He just got a 760 on math on the PSAT, but not in the school's accelerated math, sigh.]<br>
Anyway, thank God for the internet. It's good to finally hear that I am not alone with this issue. [Also good to hear about the long showers and falling back asleep instead of getting in the shower, lol.]</p>
<p>My son had similar tendencies, although he was keyed into grades and college admissions enough that he compensated for them and made out ok gradewise. For example, in 9th grade geometry, the students were expected to keep all of their completed homework in order by date in a notebook and they had "homework notebook tests" where the teacher would ask - "What was the answer to #5 on p. 127 from March 3?" and they had to use their homeworks (not the textbook) to answer. My son always did terrible on these tests and actually once left a whole pile of old hw on the floor that he needed and I threw it all out. The hw tests were intended to be an easy "gift" to allow students to boost their grades (and it worked that way for my daughter, who is very organized but not a math whiz.) For my son, I remember him madly calculating - "If I have a 98% average on the other tests and quizzes, and the homework test counts 25%, how low of a grade can I get on the homework test and still have an A (90%)?? " Somehow he always managed to get the 60% or whatever that he needed by the skin of his teeth. The whole thing seemed ridiculous. </p>
<p>Heidi, I would fight the school in putting your son in a lower math class for hw issues. He is not going to be any more conscientious about hw in a lower class, and he will be bored, hate it, and not learn anything. If he gets a poor grade in the accelerated class because he doesn't obey the hw rules, so be it, but putting him in a class below his ability is a totally different issue.</p>
<p>fredo:
That's so funny.My son takes his shower and then goes back to sleep "for 14 minutes." I don't really understand it!</p>
<p>Oh Heidi, the teacher knows better. I'm beginning to think more boys are like that than are not. The lesson that "they" are trying to instill is that you have to do what is required, sometimes what is required is not fun, but you have to do it anyway. Now I agree that this can go to an extreme of busywork, but my husband in his physics and chemistry classes is not just burning to check homework, he only wants to ensure that there have been enough practice problems assigned to give everyone a fair shot at sufficient practice for mastery, and there is an element of "gimme" points, (lab notebooks fall into that same category) which for boys can backfire.</p>
<p>What amazes me with my son is the energy and the angst he puts into getting out of things - if he just did his homework, it would be done, with about half the time and effort he puts into placating irate parents.</p>
<p>Anyone have trouble reading your son's handwriting? My son's writing looks like a spider committed suicide while trying to build a weird contorted web on the page. I can barely read it and I pity his poor teachers who have to mark his tests!</p>
<p>Motheroftwo - I laughed at the whole notebook story. I remember going to a parent teacher conference with my son (kids were supposed to attend at the school he was attending) when he was in sixth grade. His history teacher - who adored him - asked him to show me an assignment that she thought he had done an excellent job on. He picked up his notebook (the kind with a zipper), opened it up, and a huge wad of papers just fluttered to the floor. I'll never forget the look of shock on the teachers face (or mine!). </p>
<p>This year, his history teacher is a male. At the parent teacher conference, the issue of son's organization came up. The teacher told me that he remembers how difficult he himself found it to be organized "according to teacher standards" when he was in school - he said he works closely with the boys to help them find systems that work for them personally rather than imposing a set system on them. But, once they find the system, he insists they stick to it. So far, it seems to be working for my son. He hasn't "lost" anything important this year and he actually has learned how to open the binder spirals and put papers in his notebook.</p>
<p>carolyn,</p>
<p>My son's handwriting sounds like yours but is you son's minute as well? My son seems to be prepping for writing his name on a grain of rice. Luckily most of his teachers are in their 30's or they'd have to have someone else hold it to read it.</p>
<p>carolyn - A lot of boys have notebooks and bookbags like that. My son became more organized in a way when he started doing most hw on the computer in 10th grade. He actually put all of his written assignments into folders like "10th grade English" or "Chem labs". But he would do things like put a tremendous amount of work into a major English paper, put it on the floor next to his bookbag before going to bed, and then go off to school without it in the morning. He always had a tremendous wad of mixed papers shoved in his bookbag.
My daughter is good friends with the boy who is #1 in her h.s. class. He is extremely smart, 1600 SAT, and also just a very regular well-liked kid. She tells us that her brother's mess of papers was NOTHING compared to her friend's - that it is absolutely DISGUSTING. On the other hand, my daughter's notebooks are always in perfect order, there is never any mess of loose papers in her bag, and she always gathers everything she needs to take in the morning before she goes to bed.
She is much neater and more organized than I ever was or will be, and my husband is very organized, so it may not always be a totally sex-linked trait :)</p>