Originally Posted by intparent
If colleges went by strictly "merit based" admissions today, boys would lose out to girls by a large margin in terms of the 'merit' measurements of GPA and test scores.

I cannot remember where I heard/read this, but my recollection is that boys have a slightly lower mean but a higher standard deviation. Therefore boys dominate at the very high end, but girls dominate at a lower level (but still considerably above average).