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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]As an MIT alum interviewer, let me shed some light on the MYTH of easier admittance for girls.

Yes, a higher % of female applicants gain admission. What you don't see is the noticeable fraction of unqualified applicants (e.g., kids who like video games and are encouraged by clueless relatives to apply to MIT). This misguided group is virtually all male. Bizarre phenomenon.[/quote]

Those video game males are bottom applicants and irrelevant.  What matters is the top 2% of applicants.  Top 2% of male applicants are extremely strong at math.  Look at who is winning the hardest math and programming competitions.[/quote]

You are missing the point. DP.  PP was explaining that the whole pool is different. Admitting 2% of the male applicants when a significant portion of them are noticeably unqualified, yet admitting 3% of the female pool when almost none are unqualified means the admission rates of the qualified males v females is about the same, depending on the size of the unqualified male subset. The "listed" % admission for male v female does not tell the story. 
PP is not the first one I have heard explain the same, and it correlates with the local stem magnet. About 1/3 are females. They apply in 8th. The male v female SAT range total is the same (median is 1500 so it is a highly skewed group of students, they are all very intelligent). The females dominate the top 25%, which is announced senior year. [/quote]

You say that the male and female median SAT is the same and also that females dominate the top 25% of a stem magnet school.  But those facts don't support the conclusion that there are more females in the top 2-3% of stem students.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_International_Mathematical_Olympiad_participants[/quote]

The male dominance of children's math competitions doesn't necessarily relate directly to "top STEM students" in college.  As I understand it, a lot of arcane coaching goes into becoming one of these prodigies.  And I bet home geography (do you live near tutors and teams) plays a big role.  Then on top you get gender and racial effects from people deciding whether an activity is of interest to them based on norms and visible participation.

I view these math competitions as essentially pretty esoteric.  Like being an Olympic class javelin thrower.  There's a lot to groundbreaking STEM beyond cracking crazy math problems.  I know the profs at Caltech and MIT really want these kids to attend.  But frankly that might almost just be affinity bias because they are similar types of math geeks.

When I read this thread, and see how common women are getting in the programs, it makes me believe that you could, in the right environment, find and grow female talent to be competitive at these competitions.  But they'd have to be nurtured and encouraged and actually care about participating.

And, in the current environment, a lot of the girls in STEM programs for kids are going away or morphing into.open access.[/quote] [b]It's not really a matter of coaching - AoPS books are cheap and anyone can buy it. It's a matter of inclination to put in the time. Generally, young boys are more likely to have the motivation to put in the work in competition math, hence why boys outperform.[/b]

The fact that even you agree these kids are future math professor material is telling.

You can look at Caltech demographics before and after they discriminated based on gender to get a 50/50 class, the way MIT has been doing for decades. Prior to switching to a 50/50 class, Caltech was gender-blind, and as you would expect the vast majority of their admitted class was male.

Generally all the objective evidence supports the conclusion of the applicant pools at these elite STEM schools being mostly similar between gender with the top 2-3% being mostly male, while the only arguments in favor of the top 2-3% of the applicant pool being 50/50 depends on unverifiable narratives with no evidence to back them up.[/quote]

Do young boys have the motivation or do their parents give it to them/require it of them/coach them to have it?
[/quote] The type of parent who would encourage or even push their kid to do advanced math would do so regardless of their kid's gender. So that doesn't explain the difference in top end math achievement by gender.[/quote]

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