<p>One problem here, I think, is the (usual CC) tendency to equate “high SAT scores” flatly with “highly qualified applicant.” The truth is that girls are OVERALL presenting more qualified apps. More finely honed essays, more obsessive attention to detail on their extracurricular lists, higher GPAs in most schools, more gun-ho leadership positions, more “people skills” making for more positive & glowing recs, more likely to pursue additional outside of school recs, etc, etc, etc.
Of course there are many, many exceptions. And boys may be more likely to enter and win in quantifiable competitive areas - highly recognized math & science completions, etc.
There are exceptional kids of both genders. This article is discussing a specific group: the unhooked white female applicant with great grades, good enough test scores (700+ in each will get you there assuming you have the rest of the package), great essays, great extracurriculars, great recs. They have become a huge group, and ad such it is getting especially tough to distinguish among them.
Those who equate “qualified” with “high SAT scores” may sometimes be the same people who post saying they “don’t understand” why they were rejected from a top school because they had all the “stats” to get in.
Splitting the hairs on scores above 700 and trying to chance or rank students that way is highly unreliable and just not the way the top schools do it. </p>
<p>^ the idea that girls, overall, present better apps doesn’t match my experience. Nor the notion that their scores sit higher, their ECs are more impressive or essays better honed. They are no more magically tuned in than boys. It’s very hard to generalize, across the board.</p>
<p>And you have source documents to back up that “truth”? hahahahahahaha</p>
<p>No the simple fact is there are more highly qualified girls based on gpa. There are more female high school grads. There are more female high school grads qualified for college. It’s a numbers game.</p>
<p>I have to agree somewhat that girls tend to pay more attention to detail and things like filling out applications, etc. they tend to be a bit better on the whole for things like that. That’s not to say every girl is good and every boy is bad but in general I think ad comms will agree that the girls do a better job putting things together. Now, they are also smart enough to know that boys aren’t as detail oriented on the whole and perhaps they overlook a missed check mark or something…just guessing on that though. :D</p>
<p>Part of the difference is purely a numbers issue. Vassar is obviously trying to equalize their m/f ratio and still get >2x as many female applicants (5,414 f apps vs. 2,408 m apps). William & Mary very similar (8,072 f apps vs. 4,753 m apps). I am sure there are other schools with a similar problem with the split of apps.</p>
<p>The overall GPA does not always tell the entire story, however. To generalize yet again, it is more typical of boys (in my experience) to have more ups and downs in grades, particularly as freshman. 14-15 yos boys are generally less mature and less likely to care as much about getting top grades. They often “wkae up” and perfrom much better as high school goes on. In many cases their overall GPA may be brought down by some bad grades, but the last couple of years clearly demonstrate they are capable of doing the work.</p>
<p>Girls probably do have higher GPAs, but the correlation between GPA and success in college may differ for boys and girls. If the overall boy GPA is a bit lower than the girls GPA, it is not clear that the girls will necessarily be better college students than the boys. As the boys catch up in maturity and since success in college can be achieved differently than in high school since not all students take the same classes, the playing field may be more level.</p>