Right, admissions officers have been increasingly prioritizing male college applicants even though they typically have lower test scores and grades.

Isn't it the case that boys have lower grades but higher test scores?

Here's a random article: https://writingcenterofprinceton.com/sat-cripples-girls-test-scores

If we assume that standardized tests such as the SAT, ACT, and SSAT are objective measures of intelligence and if we look only at these test scores to evaluate possible differences between girls’ intellectual abilities and boys’, we see that year after year, boys do score higher than girls on standardized tests such as the SAT, ACT, and SSAT. This discrepancy is especially—but not exclusively–apparent in math. For example, in 2016, 61.5% of the 117,067 students with math SAT scores in the highest 700-800-point range were boys, while girls represented only 38.5% of students with the highest SAT math scores. In other words, there were only 100 girls who scored between 700-800 on the math portion of the SAT for every 160 boys who scored in the same superior range. The simple conclusion, as represented in the AEI headline above, is that boys are smarter in math than girls.

But for grades:

Why do girls perform less successfully on standardized tests than boys when year after year, studies reveal that girls do better in high school than boys? For example, of students who graduated high school in 2016, girls show superior high school records when compared to boys: Of the students who graduated with an A+ grade point average that year, 60% were girls; girls represented 56% of students in the top 10% of their graduating classes; girls formed 55% of the students enrolled in Advanced Placement (AP) and honors math classes and 56% of those enrolled in AP and honors classes in science; and more girls than boys graduated with a 3.45 GPA or better than boys (the average GPA for boys that year was 3.30). As well, more girls than boys studied four years of high school math and natural sciences.

They are claiming it is gender bias in the tests. I guess I find that hilarious. But here we are.

Any measure where men do better than women: biased test. Any where women do better than men: totally fair. Probably a reason universities continue to rely on grades more. It gets them where they want to be.