<p>Especially since girls get, on average, higher grades than boys in schools? Is the SAT biased, or are teachers biased when grading? I don't think either the test-makers or teachers are being purposely biased, but grades should be <em>generally</em> in sync with SAT scores. Of course there are outliers, but if you're going by averages, those who are successful in school do better than those who aren't.</p>
<p>To make it more confusing, SAT scores are also good predictors of first year grades in college, but girls do better their first year than boys. Again, where's the bias?</p>
<p>I don't really like the idea of this Wolfe chick eliminating questions that boys always do better on, but I do think the rest is pretty interesting.</p>
<p>I’d suggest that there’s something about school that girls do better than guys on average, and something about standardized testing that guys do better than girls on average. As for what those things are, I have no idea. </p>
<p>Here’s some speculation, based purely on my experiences and not on actual data:
Girls experience more test anxiety than boys.
Girls are more likely than guys to see the possibility for more than one answer in the reading sections where they ask you to analyze a passage. Girls are more inclined to notice ambiguity/gray areas, whereas guys are more direct/straightforward.
Guys are more likely to romanticize the idea of a person who is “smart but lazy” (i.e. doing well on the tests but not trying hard in class).</p>
<p>It seems they primarily score less in the math. Idk what goes on at your school, but we only have 3 girls in our AP Calc class, but around 20 guys; in AP physics we only have 1 girl, and again around 20 guys. Seeing how the girls in our school dislike math and avoid it, I can understand why their average math scores are a little lower.</p>
<p>I agree with all 3 of halcyonheather’s reasons. Additionally</p>
<p>4.) Grades measure work ethic more than natural ability, and girls tend to have strong work ethics, especially with grades.
5.) I learned in AP Psychology that female IQ’s cluster at the mean, and have fewer scores at either extreme. On the other hand, males tend to have a lot of IQ’s at both extremes, and fewer in the middle. The males at the high extreme are going to take the SAT; the males at the lower end are not. While IQ averages end up the same for both sexes (females just cluster near the average while males are more spread out), SAT score averages are higher for males simply because there are more at the extremes but on the SAT, there is no low extreme to balance out the high extreme.
6.) Mean can be a highly misleading statistic. It is skewed a lot by outliers (see #5). If you looked at the median, which is much more resistant to skewed data, the results would probably be similar.</p>
<p>This is also speculation loosely based on previous reading and a vague memory when regurgitating facts. </p>
<p>It’s common knowledge that the distribution of average SAT scores can be predicted based on reported income. </p>
<p>It’s also common knowledge that more females take the SAT than males.</p>
<p>There has been a marked increase in low income SAT test participants.</p>
<p>A disproportionate amount of minority males drop out of school. </p>
<p>I’m going to take a random guess and say that actual analysis of data, not what I am doing here, would statistically show that more low income minority women take the exam.</p>
<p>The net result would be a lower overall average SAT score for women.</p>
<p>I guess another way to do it is gender comparison by race and income levels. You would have to keep in mind that male minorities that take the test would be the ones who made it through the gauntlet so to speak and may score higher. </p>
<p>This probably doesn’t make any sense at all…</p>
<p>I don’t like the question. It’s like asking “why are men better drivers than women?”- they aren’t. Not all men and better at all women at anything, and the same goes for vice versa. You can’t use averages when making statements about gender.</p>
<p>the article is from 1997! back then there was no writing part and the standard deviations were smaller (getting a score farther from the mean was rarer and the ceiling was really high). now we have the writing section, which makes the girl to boy comparison more favorable than it used to be i would presume since, if i recall correctly, there’s not much of a difference between how girls and boys do in the writing and critical reading sections nowadays. where the difference in overall scores comes from is math, but that’s the most meaningless part of the SAT! if you can score high in critical reading you’re a smart person - there’s no doubt about that - but if you can only score highly in math and you suck at reading, a) you’re an international student or learned english as your second language (in which case you’re exempt from this conclusion) OR you don’t even know how to understand the language of your people and grasp the meanings of words and stories. now that, that is an embarrassment. but guys are no better than girls at that on average, so i don’t think anyone should mind that girls score lower OVERALL on the sat when it’s all because they suck a bit more at math. math is stupid, so why should they care.</p>
<p>My best guess is that more guys who would do poorly on the SAT decide not to take it than girls, therefore bringing up the mean of the guys who take it. As far as why girls have better grades but don’t do as well on the SAT, it’s because girls on average are more organized and have a better work ethic for school. As far as other posts saying that there are 3 girls in their Calc class, at my school a it’s about 60%-40% in favor of guys but AP foreign languages are about 75%-25% girls. Also the last 5 Valedictorians have been girls.</p>
<p>My school must be odd. My AP Calc class had 25 girls and 5 guys (it’s not as bad this year, but still about 70% female). The AP Physics class last year had ~8 girls and 4 guys (though it’s 16 guys and 6 girls this year).</p>