Each year, the College Board provides state-by-state statistics for each Advanced Placement (AP) exam, broken down by various demographics. The numbers of women taking the AP Computer Science exam in 2011 are illustrative of the continuing gender imbalance in computing. The table linked below organizes the 50 states and District of Columbia according to the percentage of AP CS exam takers who were women. The percentages of women across all AP exams are also listed for comparison, as well as the overall percentage of exams that AP CS constitutes for each state.
While nearly 55% of all AP exam takers are women, the percentage for AP Computer Science is much lower, only 18.9%, with a median percentage across all states of 15.4%. It is interesting to note that two states, Texas and California, account for more than 31% of all AP CS exams and both have higher than average participation by women (24% and 21%, respectively). If the numbers from these two states are omitted, the remaining percentage of AP CS participation by women for the rest of the country is 17.1%.
The numbers in this table are collected from the College Board state-by-state data files at:
http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/exgrd_sum/2011.html.
The table of state-by-state results (both pdf and Excel versions) are on the CSTA website at:
http://csta.acm.org/Research/sub/CSTAResearch.html
Dave Reed
CSTA Board of Directors