The Gender Scoring Gap on the SAT College Entrance Examination

The College Board has released its annual report on the scores of graduating high school seniors in the Class of 2018 on the SAT college entrance examination. Women made up 52 percent of the 2,136,539 test takers in the Class of 2018.

Two years ago The College Board “redesigned” the SAT and therefore it claims that current scores cannot be compared to those from the past. Scores on the redesigned test are significantly higher than those from previous years.

The SAT is scored on a scale of 200 to 800 points. This year women had a mean score of 539 on the reading test. This was five points higher than the mean score for men. On the mathematics section, men scored an average of 542. This was 20 points higher than the mean score for women. Thus, on the combined test, men had a mean score of 1076 and women had a mean score of 1061. Although the redesigned SAT shows higher overall scores, the gender gap remains about the same.

The results showed that 50 percent of men and 44 percent of women met the college and career readiness benchmark for both reading and mathematics. More than a quarter of men and women test takes did not make the readiness benchmark in either reading or mathematics.