Boys do better in exams than girls because they are 'more willing to take risks', says Oxford University's head of admissions

Mike Nicholson is director of undergraduate admissions at the university

He said that female students were risk-averse but boys 'went with gut'

A levels saw 8% of boys get top grade of A* compared to 7.4% of girls

Boys do better than girls in exams such as science because they are better at taking risks, the man in charge of admissions at Oxford University said yesterday.



Mike Nicholson claimed: ‘We have generally seen male students tend to be much more prepared to take risks, which is why they do well in exams.



‘Generally, female students are risk-averse and will tend to take longer to think about an answer. If it’s a multiple-choice question [boys] will generally go with their gut feeling. Girls will try to reason it out.’

Boys are better at exams than girls because they are 'more prepared' to take risks, according to the man in charge of admissions at Oxford University

He said that what while it depends on the subject discipline, the university had seen male students tend to be much more prepared to take risks, which is why they do well in exams.

He said boys tended to 'whizz through' timed multiple choice exams whereas girls may not even finish them.



Admitting he was talking in ‘broad brush strokes’, the director of undergraduate admissions at Oxford added: ‘If you are using timed multiple-choice assessments, that has a bearing on the likelihood of the female students even finishing the section.’



However, Professor Averil MacDonald, a board member of the Women in Science and Engineering campaign and chairman in science engagement at the University of Reading, said his statement was ‘factually incorrect’.



She pointed out that while boys dominated subjects such as physics, girls actually achieve better results across the board.



She added: ‘Girls are outperforming boys at all subjects. They are getting better results than boys even in subjects like physics, which are traditionally seen as a male preserve.



‘Boys may be following gut feeling, but that isn’t necessarily the way to get the right result.’

Professor MacDonald agreed that boys did tend to be favoured when more weight was given to exams than coursework.



‘If you phrase a question in the context of a story, boys tend to strip away what’s irrelevant more quickly.



‘But, if you ask any teacher, girls are more organised at completing coursework and getting it in on time.’



She added: ‘Industry is crying out for more female scientists and engineers because it’s important not just to have a male perspective, and more needs to be done to tackle the stereotypes in schools that mean teachers are pushing girls away from science subjects.’



Oxford University said there were 17,500 applications for 3,200 places at Oxford this year.

Mr Nicholson said that so much effort was put into selecting students when theyfirst apply that they did not do much during the clearing process.

Thursday’s A-level results revealed that this year the big winners in the battle of the sexes this year were boys.

Eight per cent of boys achieved the top grade of A * compared to 7.4 per cent of girls.

Last year they were separated by just 0.1 per cent.

Boys also narrowed the gap in combined A* and As with a 0.2 per cent improvement to 26 per cent, while girls slipped half a per cent to 26.6 per cent.

0verall, girls still managed to outperform boys in all subjects except maths, chemistry, Spanish, French and German.

Number crunching: The differences are the biggest in language and the smallest in maths, but even in this subjects girl get better grades on average, the study claims

Four in five physics exams were sat by boys, an increase of four per cent in a year. They also took 60.7 per cent of the maths papers, up 3.9 per cent.

But girls accounted for 74.3 per cent of psychology entries, a rise of 5.2 per cent, and around seven in ten psychology A-levels.

Experts suggested peer pressure might be deterring candidates from taking exams usually associated with the opposite sex.

Michael Gove is trying to end grade inflation by making exams more robust.

End-of-course exams replacing bite-size tests on modular courses is one of the measures being introduced under the Education Secretary’s watch.

'They only begin to think about it once they’ve got a string of As at that level. It gives them the confidence to think Oxford is within their reach.



'Our biggest concern is that the proposed reforms could undo an awful lot of work that has been going on in the higher education sector to encourage students.'



