Female students are at a big disadvantage when it comes to university entrance exams. They are too nervous. This fact decreases their chances of being accepted to the school of their choice. A new study released by the Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education of Charles University (CERGE-EI) compared students’ success in entrance tests.
If women apply to a university programme, where applicants must pass difficult entrance exams to be accepted into the most competitive courses, they tend to have worse results than their male colleagues. The study shows this is the case even though they have excellent knowledge of the material, sometimes better than the men.
“We were inspired by similar surveys abroad, in France and in the US, for instance, focusing on differences in competitiveness and ability to cope with stress. The results are very similar to what we have found out. The chances of women being accepted into the most prestigious schools are lower,” said economical analyst Štěpán Jurajda, who carried out the research together with Daniel Münich, an economist.
Test for 100,000 students
The research was conducted among all high school graduates from 1999 who applied for university. It was possible because all high school graduates in 1999 took the trial Czech language and mathematics leaving exam.
“We’re using 10-year-old statistics to verify our theory because there was no other trial exam at the national level. We worked with a large sample of more than 100,000 students,” said Jurajda.
The authors of the study were aiming to find out the level of success among university applicants with the same quality of education.
One example: A male and a female student each earned 80 points on the Czech language test. When both of these two graduates were applying for a university programme of the same specialisation, for example, social studies, both of them had no problem getting in.
However, when there was higher demand for a chosen programme, the boy’s chances of succeeding grew by 4%. The girl got nervous over the high competition.
Men more competitive
“The research doesn’t show that a majority of men would have better chances of succeeding in entrance tests. Our study involves only those applicants who reached the same results in the national trial exams and applied for the same specialisations,” said Jurajda.
A French study evaluating entrance exams to a prestigious economic school showed the same results. When doing the trial tests, the women had good results. But their performance level decreased when they were under pressure. “Men are more determined, raised to be more competitive. Women are more emotional and have more difficulties dealing with stress,” said Hana Kubíková, a psychologist dealing with stress in difficult situations, who also organises training sessions on how to handle stress.
