The Gender Gap in Scores 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 2019 on the SAT college entrance examination. Women made up 52 percent of the 2,220,087 test takers in the high school graduating Class of 2019.

Three 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.

Each of the two subsections of 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 five points higher than the mean score for men. On the mathematics section, men scored an average of 537. This was 18 points higher than the mean score for women. Thus, on the combined test, men had a mean score of 1066 and women had a mean score of 1053. Scores for both men and women were down from a year ago.

The results showed that 48 percent of men and 43 percent of women met the college and career readiness benchmark for both reading and mathematics. More than a quarter of men and women test takers did not make the readiness benchmark in either reading or mathematics.