National Merit Scholarships


The Controversy

Although, on the average, boys and girls do about equally well on the PSAT math test, there are slightly more boys in the top 1%. (There are also slightly more boys than girls in the bottom 1%, but they don't get any awards.) Since National Merit Scholarships are awarded based in part on these scores, more boys than girls win the awards. In an effort to "correct" this imbalance, the (???) altered their formula for computing scores based on the PSAT. Instead of taking the simple average of the math and verbal scores,

(M + V)/2,

as they had done in the past, they began using a weighted average that gave the verbal score twice the weight of the math score:

(M + 2V)/3

This had the effect of lifting more girls into the top 1%, since girls tend to do better than boys on the verbal test. But this new formula turned out to have little effect. Although girls tend overall to do better than boys on the verbal test, more of the top scorers are boys than girls, just as on the math test. So the most recent alteration has been to add a written component to the test, since girls tend to be better writers than boys. The formula used now is

(M + 2V + W)/4

Is this fair?

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