Gender differences in admission scores and first-year university achievement

This study explores female underprediction in first-year university achievement by using data from 8,971 Swedish university entrants in the fall semester of 2012. The Swedish admissions system selects students by two instruments: upper secondary school GPA or scores from a scholastic aptitude test (SweSAT). Nearest-neighbour matching allows us to compare students with similar admission scores and estimate achievement differences between male and female students. The results show that admission scores underpredict achievement for women relative to men in both admissions groups and more so for the SweSAT. As we condition on field of education, achievement differences tend to vary over fields and tend to become smaller, indicating that part of the differences is related to the male-female composition of students in the different fields.