I just came across this study out of Michigan (2014) that outlines an interesting dynamic in admissions in the most selective colleges. At those institutions, women actually account for less than half of enrolled students. It's counterintuitive considering the well-known nationwide trend of women out-enrolling and out-performing men in college!
The research team posits that SAT scores explain the dynamic. Women score lower, and such colleges weight test scores very highly in admission. I think there are two possible threads of discussion for us:
- test bias and under-performance on the SAT (we know this applies to many students)
- insistence by elite institutions to highly value test scores
Here's a post about the study from The Chronicle of Higher Education:
http://chronicle.com/blogs/headcount/what-keeps-women-out-of-elite-colleges-their-sat-scores/39109
And here's the original source:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bastedo/papers/BielbyPosseltJaquetteBastedo.pdf
