This. Especially because the boys tend to spend most of their time on sports. Which isn’t very useful for the application, unless a recruit. While the boy keeps talking about his soccer game and focuses on his own self, the girl sits on multiple community boards, volunteers extensively, runs a club, and may also play a sport. |
| My ds’s high school just did an event celebrating all the kids who got a 4.0 or above. One of the dad’s went through the list and found it was 65% girls, 35% boys. The ratio for freshman boys was even smaller. |
This is why my T10-targeting son is letting up on their sport. They will still play for the hs if they get on the team (they’re expected to) but are quitting club after sophomore year and barely participated in club this spring. That was a painful $ hit but also a lesson learned - driven by him! - that when there are conflicts his time is better spent doing academic competitions, internship interviews, extra curricular things, studying for APs, and choosing to focus on what matters. He still is “an athlete” but has no illusions of playing in college, or even starting for HS. We see almost every other boy on both teams continuing to make their sport the #1. No shade, but it’s a choice. |
Exactly. The girls are more nuanced and have interesting and developed areas of academic study. They can go deeper in their essays. |
+2. I have kids of both genders and want this. |
While this may be true, teachers were 1000x stricter with school discipline from like 1600 - 2000, but nobody ever said it stifled male development. |
Oh Lord, this makes me cringe… Playing sports especially a team sport has so many benefits far beyond getting in a good college. It enhances a boy’s social skills tremendously. |
Not if they are applying to STEM programs. A female CS major still has a HUGE advantage over her male co-applicants of getting admitted. So it is major dependent. |
Get over yourself. Both my sons played soccer- one was president of NHS and an active 4 year member of an academy club and ran a lot of the school drives. He had a part-time summer job too. My other soccer player is a musician, won literary awards and very involved in two school clubs. Straight As all the way through, 5s all APs and 35 ACTs. Their friends were very similar—different sports. Their HS has tons of T10/20/Ivy make admits who were not sports recruits |
Make the same list for high test scores and you will see the reverse. TO hurt boys and benefitted girls. |
+1 million so glad we do us this for our sons. |
yes. Sending out son to an all-boys school was probably the best thing we did for him, especially coming out of Covid. |
Single gender HS, right? For the wealthy and high SES the boys and girls are indistinguishable. The ratio is identical. It’s why the competition for T10s/Ivies is similar for both sexes but drops off as you go down rankings. Gender balance at the top too. Differences are more bits are stem girls are humanities- and that drives differences/favor for MIT/tech schools and SLACs but it doesn’t mean the other gender is less qualified. Huge misconception. For the top schools both se es have the entire package. |
+1 The wealthy boys and girls are both impressive. However, the middle class girls do so much better than the middle class boys. I wonder what this will do to the dating market. |
|
If you've truly _never_ met a non-high-achieving boy, you need to get out more. There are tons.
Yes, there are more girl applicants overall and they are on average stronger applicants. This has been discussed a lot: https://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/23/opinion/to-all-the-girls-ive-rejected.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Fk8.ZLu1.ft1kBymmbDpI&smid=url-share |