That's not a bad anecdote to point to as a counter-example of men being "unfairly favored", but it might not actually be "unfair" the other way either. I was t

That's not a bad anecdote to point to as a counter-example of men being "unfairly favored", but it might not actually be "unfair" the other way either. I was top ranked in elementary and middle school, and in the top in math and science in high school, but (as you can tell from the trend) didn't care much about grades when I got to college. I was also done with applications and writing essays. I had been doing that stuff for a decade. I just wanted to focus on computer and software engineering, and it worked out pretty well for me. I even made good money doing interesting work in summer internships. I knew some other guys who treated college similarly (not a surprise we got along), and I also knew girls who were smart, and put in a lot more effort studying, in both high school and college. So, these statistics you present are rather believable. There are gender skews to what people are really motivated to work on, even when there doesn't seem to me to be really significant pressure either way. In addition to that, the "college admissions" game is an arms race that has advanced in sophistication over the years. You need leadership positions, an instrument, a sport, a foreign aid trip, a good sob story, advanced classes, grades, art, everything to get above the thousands of competitors there are for your slot in the Ivy League. There are a lot more girls putting in the effort to hit all those notes. Guys tend to focus on just a couple of them. More guys think "parents/colleges/society want me to do all this shit? fuck it, I'll just do my stuff". The result is a different path which can go similar distances in the end.