Do girls really have better applications than boys?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Throughout our kids’ middle and high school years, I noticed quite a few outreach programs to boost female interest in traditionally male dominated fields. I don’t really recall seeing the converse.

The de-emphasis on standardized testing hasn’t helped either. Males are over represented by a 14% in the top decile of combined SAT scores.

I suspect the 20% difference in female high school teachers is also a factor.

+1 and female well-being: girls on the run, etc

[Anonymous]

Smart and good looking guys are in limited supply with a lot of demand! There are more smart guys but so nerdy and immature. If they wind up making a lot of money, they will get girls but for now, hard pass.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes. I know someone in college admissions at a well regarded state school and this is actually a major concern of his. In general, the pool of qualified males is much smaller than qualified females.

This is by design.

For the past 2 decades, at least since my boys have been alive, the schools have focused all their efforts exclusively towards lifting up girls and ignoring boys.

Girls only stem camps, leadership opportunities, mentorships, etc. Etc.

Nothing whatsoever for boys.

Heck, they even destroyed boy scouts and made it coed because girls wanted to join.

Boys have been told they don't matter over the past 20 years.

Exactly. We shouldn't lift girls up by pushing boys down. It's going to have a long lasting negative impact on society

Why would anyone be surprised by this result.

[Anonymous]

I think we need more programs for boys in female dominated industries.

It’s fine to have STEM programs for girls and girls in business programs, but we should also have programs for boys who want to go into education and nursing. Maybe also medicine and law now that they are female dominated.

The education program would be very important since it would give young men more male role models in schools.

[Anonymous]

^and we need more male only scholarships. There are SO many scholarships for girls, but very little for boys.

[Anonymous]

So glad my son goes to an all boys high school. He went from being constantly in trouble in middle school to being a top student in high school. Expectations for movement, behavior, etc. were 100% more appropriate at the all boys school. Best money I have ever spent. Not kidding. He didn’t even realize how smart he is until he switched schools! His middle school made him feel so bad about himself all the time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So glad my son goes to an all boys high school. He went from being constantly in trouble in middle school to being a top student in high school. Expectations for movement, behavior, etc. were 100% more appropriate at the all boys school. Best money I have ever spent. Not kidding. He didn’t even realize how smart he is until he switched schools! His middle school made him feel so bad about himself all the time.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think we need more programs for boys in female dominated industries.

It’s fine to have STEM programs for girls and girls in business programs, but we should also have programs for boys who want to go into education and nursing. Maybe also medicine and law now that they are female dominated.

The education program would be very important since it would give young men more male role models in schools.

It’s deeper than simply creating programs. First, we have to get them to want to do the programs in the first place. This is a culture problem.

[Anonymous]

I’ll add one point that I haven’t seen here yet: travel sports. Many boys I know (even as young as 7) are funneled into playing hardcore travel sports (usually baseball, basketball, soccer, or lacrosse). As a result, they have practices every night (so they have less time to do homework) and miss some school because of tournaments. This also perpetuates the idea of “Why should I care about school? I’m going to be a professional athlete!”

Of course we also see this in girls, but at a much lower rate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’ll add one point that I haven’t seen here yet: travel sports. Many boys I know (even as young as 7) are funneled into playing hardcore travel sports (usually baseball, basketball, soccer, or lacrosse). As a result, they have practices every night (so they have less time to do homework) and miss some school because of tournaments. This also perpetuates the idea of “Why should I care about school? I’m going to be a professional athlete!”

Of course we also see this in girls, but at a much lower rate.

It's a much lower rate because professional sports is a much narrower and far less lucrative career path for women.

WNBA highest paid player makes $250,000 per year and the league average is $147,000. Yes, a couple of athletes like Caitlin Clark will make millions from sponsorships.

Compare this to Steph Curry making $55MM per year and the league average is $11.9MM. You also have MLB, NFL and NHL where male athletes make millions.

Golf and tennis provide far more lucrative opportunities, but again, the men significantly outearn the women.

Of course it's a pipe dream for anyone male or female to become a professional athlete, but it's kind of nuts to put in all that time and money for the outcome to be a marginally MC/UMC salary compared to the men.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think we need more programs for boys in female dominated industries.

It’s fine to have STEM programs for girls and girls in business programs, but we should also have programs for boys who want to go into education and nursing. Maybe also medicine and law now that they are female dominated.

The education program would be very important since it would give young men more male role models in schools.

There are almost no male teachers in elementary school and few in middle school. It would be good for boys to see some make teachers—-other than the PE teacher.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’ll add one point that I haven’t seen here yet: travel sports. Many boys I know (even as young as 7) are funneled into playing hardcore travel sports (usually baseball, basketball, soccer, or lacrosse). As a result, they have practices every night (so they have less time to do homework) and miss some school because of tournaments. This also perpetuates the idea of “Why should I care about school? I’m going to be a professional athlete!”

Of course we also see this in girls, but at a much lower rate.

I don’t know what world you live in- but I was playing travel soccer decades and it was national travel and multiple weeknight club practices, mixed with HS team too.

The girls travel basketball and soccer and volleyball has a schedule almost identical to the boys. Those is gymnastics and swimming have crazy schedules as well

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ll add one point that I haven’t seen here yet: travel sports. Many boys I know (even as young as 7) are funneled into playing hardcore travel sports (usually baseball, basketball, soccer, or lacrosse). As a result, they have practices every night (so they have less time to do homework) and miss some school because of tournaments. This also perpetuates the idea of “Why should I care about school? I’m going to be a professional athlete!”

Of course we also see this in girls, but at a much lower rate.

I don’t know what world you live in- but I was playing travel soccer decades and it was national travel and multiple weeknight club practices, mixed with HS team too.

The girls travel basketball and soccer and volleyball has a schedule almost identical to the boys. Those is gymnastics and swimming have crazy schedules as well

DP. I was a club soccer player in the 80s. It certainly existed, but was nowhere near as popular as today. At my private I was the only one in my class doing it; at the same school now it seems like half the class does some club sport.

The girl club athletes might be more realistic about their career opportunities, and that might work to their advantage. I think even the boy club athletes I know who got recruited would’ve benefitted from more time on schoolwork.

I don’t think over-investing time in club/travel sports is a top 2 or 3 driver of the trend towards fewer male college students. It might be a minor contributing factor.

Cost of attendance has outpaced inflation, and some families are now less comfortable telling their daughters to go directly into the work force than their sons.

Also test scores are far less likely to make the difference in a college admit decision. Heck the University of California is still blind. The clever but underachieving boy who was told decade ago “you are probably bored in high school but your scores show colleges your potential” is now a bit more likely to hear stories of young men who manage without college.

Also, the many single gender outreach programs to develop career interests in girls have actually worked.

[Anonymous]

*decades ago

[Anonymous]

It’s a lot of things in my view. Relative lack of male teachers/role models in public schools especially, emphasis on lifting up girls but not boys, boys being more likely to withdraw into video games and other solitary pursuits, deemphasis on standardized testing, and the increases number of females in formerly male/dominated fields (which is a good thing generally, but has not been accompanied by more males going into female-dominated fields, so there is more competition for the same fields).