Grades

I've never been one to take grades extremely seriously. I enjoyed studying the material that was interesting to me... and it turns out, that's not always what's on the test. However, in college I did get concerned that my good-ish grades were an indicator that I wouldn't be successful in electrical engineering. Thank goodness Professor Don Johnson pointed out a statistic to me way back then, that women drop engineering at a much higher GPA than men do-- I don't remember where he found it, but I vaguely remember it was something like women drop out at average of 3.3 and men at average of 2.3-- a full grade point higher.

Today I read an article about women who leave economics majors starting at A- grades. I wonder what this is today for STEM majors. I also appreciated the article's comments about women considering the whole picture-- in some types of technology and business jobs, it does take longer for a woman to get to the point where you will be treated equally (in terms of position and pay) to her male counterparts. Looking at the correlation between female students' choices and her consequences on the job market-- perhaps an A- female gets treated like a B- male? That would be an interesting study to do.