In 2018, more women took Advanced Placement (AP) exams than men, as the comparative pie charts below show. However, when it comes to AP Computer Science (CS) exams, more specifically, AP Computer Science A (CSA) and AP Computer Science Principles (CSP), only 28% of all exam takers are female, and the percentage of female among those who passed the exam is even lower.

If we take a closer look at the statistics, we’d find that for the first time, AP CSA is not the most male-skewed of all of the AP exams. Nonetheless, AP CSA is the 2nd most male-skewed as shown in the 2017 v.s. 2018 comparison below. The further away from the center, the more gender-skewed is the AP exam subject. AP CSP, which is a newer exam piloted in 2016 and released in 2017, ranks the 5th most male-skewed exam. Both exams made significant process towards a balanced pool of exam takers in 2018.

Percentage Female Exam Takers

In addition to the growth of the number of exam takers, both the CSA and CSP witnessed a growth of the percentage of female exam takers. For CSA, as shown below, 23.9% of exam takers were female: a 0.4% improvement from 2017.

Female Pass Rate

How many of these females passed compared to males? The female pass rate has been steadily approaching the overall pass rate. In 2018, 65.0% of female exam takers passed the AP CSA exam, versus the 67.4% pass rate of all exam takers, and 68.5% female passed the CSP versus the 71.0% overall.

Percentage Female Exam Takers by State

CSA

The percentage of female exam takers varies from state to state. For AP CSA, the range was from 0% (no female exam takers in Mississippi and South Dakota) to 37% (Alaska, not pictured below).

The states with top five most percentage of female exam takers are Alaska (37%), Washington (27%), New-York (27%), California (27%) and West Virginia (27%).

CSP

The percentage of female exam takers increased slightly for CSP from 30% in 2017 to 31% in 2018. On the state level, however, the percentage of female exam takers varies from 0% (no female exam takers in Montana) to 40% (New York) and 47% (District of Columbia).

This analysis is visualized and written by Willa Hua, a data visualization enthusiast. It is meant to supplement the data and report from Barbara Ericson, assistant professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan who has been working with AP CS data since 2004.