Around here is Norway were I have spent most of my adult life (save a few weeks at work in other countries.)

I'm not a native English speaker and while I get my points across I struggle with the school system. Sorry for that.

Point is, around here when you apply for higher education you get a standardized score based on:

- how good your grades were.

- being over a certain age

- having extra maths/physics/chemistry classes

- being a girl (at least in STEM)

- etc

Recently, but only recently they have finally started to add extra points for boys applying for BSc nurse studies.