High-school grades do not capture the preparation gap: controlling for high-school scores did not eliminate the gap, possibly due to a ceiling effect¶
Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · associationalr2·q2
Currency · newest study 2025 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person
Subclaims¶
Reading the evidence codes
q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r
the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.
This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.
q2 i? The authors interpret the null high-school coefficients as a ceiling effect: domain knowledge gaps may exist between gender groups without being reflected in high-school examination grades. → Ilana Ram 2025
Evidence¶
Ilana Ram 2025¶
Ilana Ram, Adam Shwartz, Ido Roll. (2025). Minding the gender gap in advanced STEM courses: effects of student preparedness and activity level. Instructional Science (2025) 53:1457–1478. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-025-09748-1
q2 · i? · associational · r2
Authors' interpretation (type e) of the mixed-model covariate results, where high-school math and physics coefficients were not significant once undergraduate performance was included. The article offers no direct measure of the ceiling effect; it is a proposed explanation, noting high-school matriculation grades clustered near the maximum (means 92.66 and 93.49).
"Since controlling for high-school scores in the mixed models analysis did not eliminate the gap, it may be that high school grades show a ceiling effect."
Discussion¶
Related Claims¶
- Women score lower than men in high-stakes final exams across advanced undergraduate STEM courses, with mean differences of 2.5 to ~7 points on a 100-point scale
- A gender gap of ~9 points appears even on a low-stakes diagnostic assessment, contradicting prior findings that the gap disappears in low-stakes assessments
- Once undergraduate-level mathematics and physics preparation is controlled, gender no longer significantly predicts performance in advanced STEM courses — related
- Higher weights on assessments shrank, but did not eliminate, the gender difference in final grades, because young women were more often in classes weighting assessments heavily — related
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
claim |
id |
high-school-grades-ceiling-effect-gap |
title |
High-school grades do not capture the preparation gap: controlling for high-school scores did not eliminate the gap, possibly due to a ceiling effect |
description |
High-school grades do not capture the preparation gap: controlling for high-school scores did not eliminate the gap, possibly due to a ceiling effect |
status |
review |
evidence_strength |
weak |
newest_evidence |
2025 |
generated |
by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-18 |
trust |
unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content |
sources |
1 — ilana-ram-2025 |
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