Men Continue to Score Higher Than Women 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 2022 on the SAT college entrance examination. Slightly more than 890,000 women in the Class of 2022 took the test. Women made up 51.2 percent of the 1,737,678 test takers in the Class of 2022. Overall, the number of SAT test takers is down by more than 20 percent from before the pandemic.

Six 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 sections of the SAT is scored on a scale of 200 to 800 points. This year women had a mean score of 531 on the reading test. This was five points higher than the mean score for men. On the mathematics section, men scored an average of 530. This was 18 points higher than the mean score for women. Thus, on the combined test, men had a mean score of 1056 and women had a mean score of 1043.

The results showed that 46 percent of men and 40 percent of women met the college and career readiness benchmark for both reading and mathematics. More than 33 percent of men and and 31 percent of women test takers did not make the readiness benchmark in either reading or mathematics.

Men were 50 percent more likely than women to score in the 1400-1600 range, scores typically required for admission to the nation’s most selective colleges and universities.