Its pretty clear they are not at all merit based with the exception of Caltech.

In fact, just the opposite at the Ivies. Its very clear that admissions are extremely biased against Asians and non-Jewish whites.

This is a loong article but its worth it. Read it ALL the way.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of-american-meritocracy/

The author is very fair and all the cites check out.

Very interesting. Will comment after I've read it all.

Of course they're not "merit-based".

They are not trying to be "merit-based".

This isn't news.

Agree with JonLaw. Top colleges do not claim to be strictly merit based in their admissions. There are many other factors that come into play. Just some of them -- ability to pay, gender balance, desire for a "balanced" class with diverse accomplishments and interests, ethnic diversity, economic class diversity, geographic diversity, need to fill certain types of skills for the school (eg, athletic).

"Nations which put their future national leadership in the hands of such individuals are likely to encounter enormous economic and social problems"

Exactly what has America (and most of the rest of the world) done for the past hundreds of years by shutting women out of top education and job opportunities? 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. It is significantly easier for boys to be admitted to top schools with lower statistics because women are doing so much better in the classroom and in testing now that they have been given the opportunity. I am pretty sure that is not what most readers of the American Conservative (source of this article) would like to see.

Yes. And there is a huge difference betweeen this process and admitting "unqualified" applicants, as the article asserts.

The article is an overt attempt to provoke.

DeeDee

That's very interesting point about boys vs. girls. It's a long piece, but was it addressed anywhere? The author had some sort of randomized admission proposal (from a pool of qualified applicants).

And what exactly would be the conservative proposal for dealing with the situation, were it a problem? I thought conservatives were all for staying out of the affairs of private institutions.

DeeDee

Well...maybe, but provoking isn't always a bad thing.

I regret to say that I've seen the admission of unqualified applicants. Never mind the details, but I saw this happen. Two wealthy parents I know had a child who was, shall we say, something of an underachiever. But Mom and Dad went to fancy schools, and Child had to. So they called up College A, which was somewhere around the low end of the Tier 1 schools, negotiated a donation in exchange for admission, and presto! He got in. And no, the kid did not suddenly shine in college.

There is some truth to this:


This is backwards, and misinformed:

Not in all cases. Caltech and MIT are held up in this article as islands of merit-based admissions, and I have certainly never heard of them being female-dominated. In fact, Caltech definitely aims for a better gender balance in admissions to the extent they can do so without dooming underqualified freshmen women to failure.

In today's metaphyical lesson, we learn that money can be used to purchase services.

State schools give free rides to students who have no interest in otherwise attending them. I went to the school that offered me the best deal. In my case, it was a free education and room and board.

How is this different? It's just compensation at the other end of the spectrum.

Those are STEM schools.

HYP, etc. aren't STEM schools.

The cases of race and sex discrimination in college admissions are different. I don't think most of the American public is opposed to the existence of single-sex educational institutions (should we shut down Wellesley?), as long as there are plenty of institutions to serve both sexes. If an absolute preference for one sex is tolerated in institutions subsidized by Pell grants and guaranteed student loans, I don't see why a mild preference in favor of either sex to achieve "gender balance" should be disallowed.

What conservatives want is an end to racial preferences in college admissions at schools that get Federal money, which is about all of them. In state referenda on racial preferences (for example Michigan and California), the public has supported this position.

Yes, but you should not be able to purchase a seat at Harvard for $1 million and then claim it as a charitable contribution on your tax return. The receipts charities give for donations state that no services were rendered in return. Universities that accept donations, give such receipts, and factor donations into admissions decisions are committing tax fraud, as are the "donors".

I don't think this gets around the issue at all. If admissions should be merit-based and blind to all other factors, then they should be merit-based and blind to all other factors, regardless of Smith's existence. You're not in favor of anything else I can think of that does anything to address gender imbalances--for instance, the paucity of women in STEM fields. Why is it different in this case?

I agree with this position, and I also think that other preferences should be removed, especially donation preferences, alumni child preferences, friend-of-famous-or-superwealthy-alum preferences, and other random preferences. Admission should be merit-based. Defining "merit" is a complex question, but it's also a completely different question.

I'm not sure I even like gender preferences, but if the differences are very slight and the girl is picked so that there will a balance, then maybe it's okay. But only if the differences are very slight in a transparent rubric where all factors are relevant to academic ability (e.g. "SAT/GPA/Our entrance exam") that doesn't include opaque non-academic factors like donation dollar points or child of alum points.

In fact, I'd say the same for all the other preferences too: if you have nearly-equally qualified candidates and you want to pick the donor's kid/Hispanic kid/famous actress, fine. But ONLY if they're truly nearly-equally qualified in some fair and pre-defined way. So, setting a low minimum number of points that will admit 40% of applicants and then cherry-picking as you please isn't allowed. If you admit 13% of applicants, your pool of borderlines has to be very close to the 13% cutoff line. As in, close enough that the college won't be lowering standards to keep them enrolled and close enough that the parents can't find ways to game the system.

Sex preferences can go both ways. I think MIT should be allowed to give preferences to female applicants, and I believe it does.

I think the gross inequality in academia between tenure-track and adjunct professors hurts women. Women (and men) who step off the tenure track to raise a family cannot get back on and are paid a fraction of tenure track faculty for the same teaching load, with no job security.

This will never happen because these are social institutions.

One of their goals is to keep donations coming and to retain their social place in society.

They know what they are doing and they will not make the admissions fully merit based because that would interfere with their goals.

Our society apparently no longer has any interest in prosecuting such cases or cases involving massive systemic fraud.

Nearly-equally qualified is too vague a standard to be written into law. Either a school should be allowed to look at factor X or it should not. In the real world, schools might still give small preferences, but they would have to maintain plausible deniability.

You can define it: "Within 3% of the number of cutoff points."

Please don't polititroll, thanks.

Its pretty clear that you did not read the article. I also think at least one other commenter did not as well.

I think you just looked at the url and my cut and drew your conclusions.

The author takes great pains to marshall the data and then draw conclusions and THEN propose a change to the process. He cites a lot of books and articles along the way mostly from so-called "Liberal" sources and pulls a page from a "Liberal" to propose the solution.

This is a great piece of induction, analysis, and synthesis.

I will synopsize this article.

Its very clear from the article that most of the academically superior students of both sexes are passed over for kids at least a standard deviation down the scale. The author begins with analyzing the admission of Asian and Jewish students relative to the general population and contrasts this with the NMSF composition. For example, just 1000 of the NMSF students were Jewish yet 3000 got into the top 3 Ivies. That means that 2000 of the non-Jewish NMSF were denied. A comparison to Caltech to NMSF shows that Caltech admits solely on merit and the relative numbers by race from Caltech deviate by several orders of magnitude from the Ivies relative numbers.

Its also clear that most admissions officers lack the high caliber academic credentials that the average student applying possesses. Thus they are unable to develop a clear, objective strategy, and then apply it to the kids they see. The result is a very skewed process that allows too many unqualified kids and greatly reduces the number of very superior students. The author cites books by the same admissions folks and statisticians.

The author then asks what is the solution. The author looks at several alternatives then discards each because each would then leave out kids with many talents other than just academics and notes that many kids will do well above a certain threshold. EO Wilson is a notable example. The author comes up with a two-tier system. First tier is to admit 10-20% solely on merit. Ie rank kids solely by academic merit and take the top x%. The remaining seats are filled by lottery from the list of kids who meet the threshold.

Think what this means. NMSF is the 99.5 percentile. 1000 kids at 99.5 means there are 200,000 students in that group and if you pull 2000 from that group that means you pull from the 98th percentile. There are huge differences between the 99.5 percentile and the 98th in terms of performance at the highest levels. Its a huge disparity.

The lottery for the 90% addresses all the other "imbalance" issues. Below the top cutoff for the top 10%, the rest of the applications that meet the threshold requirements go into a lottery pool. I think you could also give each Dean 10 slots to put anyone they find in as well just like you give the sports coaches. This would allow the clear exceptions to the rule to get in, ie kids who are Classics superstars or musicians or STEM savants.

Come to think of it, the Military uses this same system to fill jobs. Usually your class top grads are given their choice, the top x % get offered fighters, and then everyone is leveled after that.

And my point is that this is a feature of the system as it is currently exists, not a bug.

They are not necessarily trying to get the academically superior students; they are trying to get the type of students they want to get.

WAT? How do you get from there to here? It is not possible to make a logical conclusion from the previous two statements.


A comparison of Caltech to Harvard fails on soooo many levels:

- Harvard is a liberal arts school, which generally appeals to Jews.
- Caltech is a technical school, which generally appeals to Asians.
- Significantly higher concentrations of Jews live near Harvard.
- Significantly higher concentrations of Asians live near Caltech.

The author fails still when he compares schools within the same geographical region, because he credits the different makeup of MIT to them being better able to objectively evaluate prospective students, rather than stating the obvious: it's MIT. Maybe the fact that both of these schools (Caltech and MIT) have "Technology" in their full names would have been a clue.

Then again, there's no reason to expect a high level of scholarship from The American Conservative, and any illusions a reader may have had along those lines are dashed the minute they see made-up statistics based on "names that sound Jewey."

I think its a function of the administrators running the academic side of things rather than the Deans and the professors. The latter should develop the admissions policies and then do the admissions selection oversight with the admissions department handling the clerical tasks. The football coach does not let admissions select his team. Neither should the Deans.

I think the Deans will act at most schools on this issue and others.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-...-000-feed-outcry-over-college-costs.html

"I don't see why a mild preference in favor of either sex to achieve "gender balance" should be disallowed."

It isn't a 'mild preference' any more. If they admitted women vs. men strictly on GPA and test scores, with the exception of STEM schools, the top 100 ranked colleges in US News rankings would skew something like 70% female/30% male. Boys are being given a huge break in admissions these days. So anyone who wants to get rid of "preferences" and go with strictly score- & GPA- based admissions needs to accept that as an outcome. As soon as you say, well... that isn't so great, we should give boys a break, then you have to ask why any other underrepresented group should not also get some breaks as well. You can't have it both ways.

I don't love the donation admit, either. But gotta say that enough money to build a new library or a new science facility that thousands of students will benefit from over the years is worth something to the school AND the student body. The number of those types of admits are ridiculously small, too.

At most colleges, alumni kids who truly aren't qualified get a "courtesy waitlist". One of my kids, who would have been the 8th family member over four generations to go to a top ranked university got one of those. And honestly, they were right to do so (not admit her). If an alumni kid gets in, it is because they met the qualifications to be seriously considered, then got an edge because of their alumni status. Most colleges no longer let the kid in if they don't stack up to the rest of the admission pool.

"For example, just 1000 of the NMSF students were Jewish yet 3000 got into the top 3 Ivies. That means that 2000 of the non-Jewish NMSF were denied."

Is there an assumption here that all NMSFs apply to a top Ivy? My D is NMSF this year, and is not applying to any top Ivys (or MIT or Caltech). And she is not the only one... of the four NMSFs at her high school, I think only one is applying to ANY ivys. One is applying ED to Reed, one is going to Michigan Tech on a scholarship, and D is hoping for a U of Chicago admit. There is one boy who MIGHT apply to an Ivy, but I actually suspect that Carleton is his top choice. So that is, um... 0 to 25% of the NMSF pool at our high school applying to a top Ivy.

Correction about that perception-- admission to the institution is not the same thing as admission to the program/major.

Deans/faculty DO make admissions decisions. It's just not evident at this top-level analysis.

But that plays into the flaws in the reasoning illustrated in the (insightful) observations about Caltech versus Harvard in terms of applicant pools not being identical. I'm not sure that there is a good way to compare one elite institution to another in the first place for the simple reason that each "brand" draws a specific potential applicant pool.

Since those complex brand-affiliation reasons can't be normalized in any meaningful way, I'm not sure that we can expect that the student populations ought to be "representative" of anything but the qualified applicants within that specific applicant pool. So maybe MIT's admits won't look like those of Harvard, no matter how fair or meritocratic the process became.

LOL...right.

I think you are making caricatures rather than citing facts like the author does. He is quite careful to use local populations for his stats.

Let's address the comment on Jews outside of the author's comments.

I applied to and was accepted to both Caltech and Princeton.
My maternal grandfather pushed me to apply to both - and he was an Ashkenazi Jew who owned a large business in the South - as was his wife, albeit having changed their names to fit in. I applied to Caltech and the Ivies because I was the grandchild of a Jewish couple and wanted to do pure research.

Caltech is famous for being full of Jews and has been headed by a Jew for most of its existence - and it is considered to be THE prestigious school for pure science. Which it still is.

Let's address Caltech vs Harvard.

Science is a component of Liberal Arts.

All the Ivies have very strong and prestigious sciences schools with many students going into Finance or Medicine or into grad studies. EO Wilson, Watson and Crick of Harvard. Einstein at Princeton. I grew up knowing these names before I was a teenager. I knew the Ivies for Science - Harvard for Biology and Princeton for Physics - not for anything else.

In fact, Harvard has as many admissions into the Sciences schools as Caltech does for the whole school. Ditto for Princeton. In fact, those two Ivies, if they took away all the other schools, would dominate Caltech in numbers alone - both in terms of students admitted, grad programs, funded studies, and cited professors.

I'm very confused by that statement, too.

3000 meaning what? NMSF? Or Jewish students? Or something else entirely?

I'm clearly missing something in that statement.

IIRC, the article said that National Merit Scholarship people publish an annual list of 16,000 top high school students (presumably based on SAT scores alone? Not sure). Less than 1,000 Jewish students make the list. Roughly 15,000 non-Jewish Asian and white students are on the list.

Ergo, if >2,000 non-top-student Jewish people were admitted to the top schools, the admissions people were favoring Jewish students by dipping into the low end of the Jewish talent pool. And as a result, they were probably rejecting some of those non-Jewish people who were "better" students (which could really mean "had higher SAT scores," I don't know.").

I'm recalling this information, not pulling it out of the article. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I don't think public universities should discriminate on the basis of sex, but if private women's and men's colleges can discriminate absolutely, other colleges should be able to discriminate to a lesser extent. You can't have it both ways.

And really, I was only addressing half of the equation, the demand side. Jon Law already addressed the supply side, when he said these institutions will admit the kind of students they're looking to admit. The schools manage their own brands, and admissions criteria are one way to do so. Every time an earthquake happens and the staff at Caltech is interviewed, the value of their brand is enhanced. Every time a Harvard graduate is appointed to a Cabinet post, the value of their brand is enhanced.

So now here we are, synthesizing the two sides of the equation, supply and demand. The two schools will have different customer bases applying to them, and of those, the two schools will make different choices based on the kind of customer they wish to serve. As a result, they're going to have very different outcomes.

Supply and demand, just like capitalism. Naturally... these are all private institutions we've been talking about, are they not? As such, are they not allowed to make whatever business decisions they choose? And if so, why is The American Conservative decrying the lack of meritocracy in these choices? Do they suddenly have a problem with capitalism?

There are two questions in your post.

First question is do the Ivies discriminate? The answer is yes. The numbers of non-Jewish whites and Asians admitted over time has dropped in favor of Jews and others in either absolute and relative terms. This is supported by both general population and NMSF comparisons. The only flaw I can see in the reasoning is if the number of apps correspondingly dropped for the "discriminated" populations and I would find that unlikely given how they were accepted before, all things being equal.

The second question is one of branding. I agree that Caltech and the Ivies are somewhat "local" schools. The author addresses this obvious issue by looking at both national and state populations and then playing admissions off both national and state NMSF numbers. In this case, its hard to see a flaw in this line of reasoning.

The one thing the author does miss, and it does play into school selection, is that a lot of public schools and tier 2 privates actively court NMSF students with full rides and good programs. The Ivies now have some solid competition. A number of my coworkers and friends with stellar kids chose to go this route and never applied at all to an Ivy.

On the other hand, I know from some kids here in Dallas that a lot of kids do apply to Ivies and do not get accepted despite NMSF, straight A's and and AMC Honor Roll.

And the article points out that the Ivies accept around 25% of the kids with perfect SATS. So that would tend to imply that the applications from top kids are in abundance still.

So it seems to me that the preponderance of evidence is in the Author's favor.

This is correct. They had to dip into the 98th percentile or lower.

A company owning apartment buildings could decide that excluding non-whites helps to "manage its brand", but civil rights laws prevent this. If private businesses are forbidden to discriminate on the basis of race, so should universities.

Thanks-- I just wasn't following the logic there.


Well, this is still missing what I was trying to point out-- that not all prospective students-- even those at or above the Xth percentile (whatever that might be) will consider themselves "BigNameInstitution" material. For reasons that often make no real sense in a rational, logical way.

Similarly, applicants may feel a sense of identity with an institution for reasons that are not easily distilled into rational, logical, or certainly quantitative measures.

What makes a student a "Reedie" as opposed to a "UVA" student?

I realize this is moving out of the Ivies, but I deliberately chose two schools with selective admissions, but distinct (and vastly different) identities.

It also hasn't got as much to do with geography as one might imagine, which is why I am skeptical that the population statistics applied here are really saying what the author THINKS they are saying.

Agreed. (FWIW.)

If I'm making caricatures, your author did it first, because you apparently failed to notice that he raised these same points (and then failed to adequately explain them away).


The important question here is, what was his standing in the Bilderberg Group?


I see. It seems the problem is with the meaning of "liberal arts." Here's the definition I'm using:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/liberal%20arts


Again, the use of the term "Technology" in the full names of Caltech and MIT may have provided a useful clue.

An important point in the article was that these colleges are producing future American leaders. As such, they presumably have a duty to pick based on merit, not on fuzzy factors.

Not to mention that these universities aren't "private" in the real sense of the term. Each one takes in hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds every year. An enormous percentage of this income is indirect costs on grants (as high as 60 or 70% of the total grant at some places and more than 50 at all or most of them). Indirects can be used almost as the university sees fit. This gives them a duty to the public, and admitting dimwitted little Junior because Mummy and Daddy ponied up a donation does NOT fit the public interest.


But the damage Junior and his frat buddies did to the world economy a few years back is, IMO, not worth that library.

So the question is, which laws are the Ivies violating?

You are not even taking this seriously. Are you suggesting that the admissions people are taking bribes?

The point you are missing is that the Ivies hold themselves up as the elite, yet their admissions decisions discriminate against the academic elite on a large and systematic scale. This is undeniable. This is also very dishonest.

While they may be private schools, they do take in a lot of public money - both in terms of student grants and research funding. As such they are subject to Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Education Act of 1972 provisions.

My gut feeling on the numbers is that they are probably open to A Title IX suit for the female academic elite part. The skew is just so large. Or they went the other way and now face a Race-based suit.

Keep in mind that I am left of center on most things.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_IX

That's not how self-selecting aristocracies are supposed to work, though.


True, they do take in huge amounts of public money. Whether that requires them to adopt a certain public duty is a matter for interpretation... either by the leadership of the school, or through public policy.

If students are regularly admitted based primarily on the fact that the parent has written a very large check to the institution, how is this even a question? OF COURSE they're taking bribes... just not in the personal way you seem to be suggesting.


What makes you think their definition of "elite" is the same as yours? You tied your definition directly to academics, but the Ivies court the children of those close to the center of power and/or are very wealthy. They also court students who exhibit certain traits that they find desirable in a student body, which includes academics, and a lot of other traits besides. Academics is a part of their definition, but only a part.

The Ivies can claim elite status based entirely on their over-representation in board rooms and Capitol Hill.

I find this insulting. I ask you to stop using racist and offensive terms like this.

Actually, it is not open to interpretation. They cannot discriminate.

Here is the basis of the law.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regents_of_the_University_of_California_v._Bakke

And wrt to minorities underrepresented.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grutter_v._Bollinger

In the Ivies case, it clearly over selects.

Congrats by the way.

I know that a lot of schools outside the ivies are courting NMSF with free rides. I agree this might depress some apps.

But, the article quotes the Ivies that they only accept 25% of the perfect SATs. So they are not starved for top tier apps.

Have just discussed this point with someone familiar with it.

It's more subtle than giving a million bucks in exchange for the admission. If my source is correct, you're donating the money because you think College X is so swell. This is totally irrelevant to the fact that Junior applied or got wait-listed, and anyway, even if it was, there's no guarantee that Junior will get in. It's a charitable donation, after all. Hello, plausible deniability.

Also, as for the alum children (and friends of alums) admissions, my understanding is that admissions are heavily influenced by parental schmoozing. For example, Mummy/Daddy and the admissions people belong to the same club and socialize occasionally. Daddy mentions that Junior applied to College X and that he really thinks the world of it. And you love your alma mater so much, you're thinking of helping out with "development" efforts this year. But if you do, there's no guarantee that Junior will get in because of your actions!

Meh.

Me? You're the one who seemed to think that the religion of the leadership of Caltech was important. You started this whole thing by linking to an article talking about over-representation of Jews at leading universities, from a notoriously right-wing source. This whole thread is trending towards conspiracy theory loony-land.

I did ask you not to polititroll. You declined the request.

I actually know of a conversation regarding a million dollars in exchange for admission. However, I don't think that said potential enrolee ever got the million out of the family piggy bank (which was full of many such millions), so it never went anywhere, but for want of the million dollars.

I take it that you just confirmed my thesis that money is useful for services?

UC Davis is a public school. So is the University of Michigan. You mentioned Title IX before, so maybe you should read it:

"in regard to admissions to educational institutions, this section shall apply only to institutions of vocational education, professional education, and graduate higher education, and to public institutions of undergraduate higher education;"

Hmmm... public undergrad programs are covered, private undergrad programs are excluded.

You also mentioned the CRA of 1964. The part of that law that applies specifically to colleges is "TITLE III--DESEGREGATION OF PUBLIC FACILITIES"... notice a key word there?

So again, the question remains, what law/s are the Ivies violating?

Umm.

Dude, you've admitted in at least one other thread that you like to argue for its own sake. Yesterday, I wrote something about the band room incident. You did such a masterful job of contorting the meaning of my words to manufacture controversy, I considered suggesting that you seek employment as a commentator on Fox News, if you don't do that already.

Personally, I'm tired of your constant baiting and thread inflaming. Too many threads get derailed.

I know that lots of people here (myself included) write things that may be provocative, but in my case at least, I'm offering honest opinions and not tossing out statements designed to sidetrack a debate and/or create a shouting match. I get an strong impression of "designed to manufacture controversy" from a lot of what you write. There are lots of internet forums that encourage this kind of thing, but IMO, this isn't one of them. Of course, this is just my humble (but honest) opinion.

"On the other hand, I know from some kids here in Dallas that a lot of kids do apply to Ivies and do not get accepted despite NMSF, straight A's and and AMC Honor Roll."

I think you are missing the point on who the tippy top colleges ARE accepting. They are looking for the kid who is smart enough, but also swims against the tide and has something special -- some special research experience, or has delved deeply into (and published) something important in an area like philosophy, or has won major national music competitions, or something like that. They get a ton of NMSF, straight A, AMC honor roll kids. So just because you know a bunch of them in Dallas who did not get in does NOT mean that they are favoring Jewish applicants just on the basis of their ethnicity/religion/last name, for crying out loud. The point is that they are not looking for the heads-down race-to-the-front-of-the-crowd-of-lemmings kid. They want the ones that are very bright, hardworking, but somehow off the beaten path in their accomplishments and interests. You gotta accomplish a lot to get in, but it is MUCH better to accomplish something unusual than just the standard school activites.

If you want to know how to get your kids into one of those schools, read Cal Newport's book "How to be a High School Superstar: A Revolutionary Plan to Get Into College By Standing Out (Without Burning Out)". His point is that competing head on in the same activities with tens of thousands of other students is not a good way to stand out. There are too many sports team captains, yearbook editors, student body presidents, validictorians, etc. If there are thousands of them in this country, that is not a recipe for success in admissions. Pick something hardly anyone else is doing and excel at that. THAT is the key to admissions to top colleges today, as long as you can keep your GPA at a reasonably high level (3.7 or 3.8 unweighted is fine) and score well on standardized tests.

Now... is it possible that one group or another based on geography, ethnicity, etc. has figured out this forumula and is overperforming on admissions because of it? Very possible. But I hear a lot of whining from parents who don't understand how the game is played today, and don't see why their kid with great statistics did not get in. THIS is why they didn't get in, not because someone stole their spot because their last name starts with Gold.

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).

Speaking of needlessly inflammatory... this post. Way to be exactly what you're complaining about.

As for your complaints about the other thread, I assure you that my reaction to your apologies for adult abuse of authority was quite genuine.

Completely agree. Being able to hide some users' posts would be a really useful feature.

We agree on something, then.

More enforcement of the forum rules would also help, particularly the one about political topics.

On the SAT boys have a slightly higher overall composite score than girls (higher in verbal and math, lower in writing) and slightly higher standard deviations in scores http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/research/TotalGroup-2012.pdf. In 2012 there were 74,000 males and 45,000 females with math SAT scores of 700 or above. About 60% of students with A or A+ high school GPAs are female (Table 13).

I'm going to lock this one for now.