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 2017 on the SAT college entrance examination. The College Board has “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 534 on the reading test. This was just two points higher than the mean score for men. On the mathematics section, men scored 538. This was 22 points higher than the mean score for women. Thus, on the combined test, men had a mean score of 1070 and women had a mean score of 1050.

Although the redesigned SAT shows higher overall scores, the gender gap remains about the same.