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roundhousemb t1_j1q4qy6 wrote

I feel like there's gotta be some bias in only sampling top performing students. If they were freshmen at your university maybe that's what was selected for it but it's odd to me that everyone's highschool average is in the 90s.

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OkPersonality6513 t1_j1q5bzp wrote

Yes and I would be very interested to see statistics for the lower grades too. Do people with lower grade have a self reported lower confidence or not would be a nice information.

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GeorgeDaGreat123 OP t1_j1qe86p wrote

Unfortunately (or fortunately), the mean. median. and mode of those who were admitted into my program was 97-98% because the program's so competitive.

That would be an interesting statistic to compare in another less competitive program where marks may be more varied though — like business or the sciences.

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Embarrassed-Loss-118 t1_j1rhnsx wrote

Usually best ones = men, and worst ones=men

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nocuzzlikeyea13 t1_j1rj5fv wrote

Why do you think that is?

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Alyxra t1_j1ryiqy wrote

Bell curve of IQ by gender, same reason vast majority of prisoners are male.

Men have both the highest IQ and the lowest IQ. Whereas women correlate more in the middle tier with less outliers on both ends.

In general.

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nocuzzlikeyea13 t1_j1sogyg wrote

I'm asking why you think that's the case? What's your theory as to why the data reflects that?

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throw_somewhere t1_j1tiy76 wrote

If you're curious about something, try looking it up, preferably on Google Scholar or some other more empirically robust place than Google.

Why ask a random Redditor what their theory is? They probably know just as little as you do. Laypeople really aren't knowledgeable enough to have plausible and well-informed theories outside their realm of expertise. Meanwhile there are scientists working on these problems for their entire lives, and their writings can be found relatively quickly.

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nocuzzlikeyea13 t1_j1xatxm wrote

I'm not actually a layperson, I have my own theory. I'm actually curious about what the consensus here is.

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Alyxra t1_j1uvxl5 wrote

I’m not sure.

If I had to guess I would say it’s probably due to evolutionary pressure from gender roles over thousands of years but that’s not backed up by any study.

I haven’t really researched this area much.

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Historical_Shop_3315 t1_j1trrko wrote

You could point to gender roles or biology. Men often try to make themselves exceptional in some way.

I cant find the source quickly but some reasearch found that men see about half the women they know as potential mates. This means women just need to be better than half to be considered by men. This isnt consciously done obviously but at some level most women are just tryig to be better than half.

Women only see 1-3 men as potential mates. Its a limited number independent of how many men they interact with. This means men need to excel or be exceptional in some way. If they arent then what is the point in trying.

In life this plays out as men reaching for extreems more often. And giving up if they wont be seen as exceptional.

If your not first, your last.

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Embarrassed-Loss-118 t1_j2bfnfl wrote

Idk maybe as a society we tend to care more about women, so men are more likely to be homeless. But also men are more likely to sacrifice everything for an ideal, so it's more likely that most rich people are men.

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GeorgeDaGreat123 OP t1_j1qdtzd wrote

The fact that there were only students with high school averages in the 90s is because the software engineering program at my university is incredibly competitive.

At a 93% average, you have a 5% probability of admission.

The mean, median, and mode of all high school averages of those admiited into the program was between 97 and 98%. This statistic includes everyone as it was released by university admissions themself.

Since the surveyed mean above is also in the range of 97-98%, and 80% of people responded, I don't think that type of bias should be an issue.

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roundhousemb t1_j1qini1 wrote

I mean I don't think you can say that the bias isn't an issue if you want to make any kind of generalized conclusion off that data. It's representative of your program maybe (and maybe a few similarly competitive programs) but it's kinda a stretch to suggest it's representative of all who start software engineering degrees.

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GeorgeDaGreat123 OP t1_j1qivia wrote

Yes I agree, any generalization would require a multi-university survey

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phdoofus t1_j1qp55r wrote

>The fact that there were only
students with high school averages in the 90s is because the software
engineering program at my university is incredibly competitive.

Hello sampling bias

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hamburger5003 t1_j1r52x4 wrote

Yeah, also it’s grade averages and not a standardized test which may have an effect. Most schools tend to artificially bias female students’ grades higher, so doing it for a standardized test may give more accurate data.

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nocuzzlikeyea13 t1_j1rjawj wrote

Uhhhh source?

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hamburger5003 t1_j1rtem8 wrote

It’s a well documented phenomenon over the last few decades with a few possible explanations. It’s hard to search for general studies because most studies seem to be either super specific or more focused on the male/female differences in math and science/reading and writing performance. But here are the major ones I keep seeing cited.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/4120992 I believe the first to prove there is a general gender gap in received grades vs aptitude. Not in here but I believe other studies suggest this trend is present everywhere except Nordic countries.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01425692.2022.2122942 Major study recently to suggest that this gap is systemic.

From personal experience, I can’t give much to secondary school because it was all boys, and my tertiary is a very small male-dominated field, but I distinctly remember my primary school was very sexist against boys in a number of ways, and I would not be surprised if this were also in grades.

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Tasty-Tumbleweed-786 t1_j1u1sc0 wrote

Just a note that grades Vs tests is different from grades Vs aptitude - eg maybe girls don't test as well but are better at coursework/participating in classroom learning?

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hamburger5003 t1_j1unl42 wrote

Good point. It’s hard to differentiate these things. Aptitude is important to measure here because that is generally the goal when it comes to learning skills for careers or life, and they’ll try to measure these learned abilities with aptitude tests. Ie: you might have taken the ‘Scholastic Aptitude Test’ (SAT) in high school. One of the possible considered reasons for this discrepancy is just that males are better at taking tests and/or females are better at classwork, discussed in the first linked study.

From what I understand because I haven’t read more than the abstracts and intros is that the second study was supposed to have accounted for that idea and still found statistical bias.

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tryght t1_j1tpmy8 wrote

There was some sort of music or orchestra that decided to do blind listening tests for the judges to eliminate sexism.

There was a paper in 2000 that claimed that it increased female selection by 50%, but so far, only the opposite has been replicated and to my knowledge, no explanation to where they got their numbers was ever provided.

It turns out that when the judges knew that the women were women, they would rate them higher.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/blind-spots-in-the-blind-audition-study-11571599303

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kilawolf t1_j1rhow7 wrote

Is it? I feel like for many unis in my country now even 90 averages aren't enough for most engineering programs...and it's not even the good unis

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hedgehog090 t1_j1rkj5m wrote

What country are you from and what testing system do you use? Where I'm from a 96% average in grade 12 would likely put you at #1 in the country, and a 94% average would likely put you in the top 50 nationally. Honestly I prefer it that way, I can't imagine hundreds of people getting at or near 100 across all subjects, kinda defeats the purpose of figuring out who is at the top.

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