Women’s recruitment board aims to balance gender ratio

The Office of Undergraduate Admission is actively involved in a marketing campaign to recruit female college applicants to ease the gender imbalance on campus. It targets female applicants who decline admission offers from Tech and choose instead to attend one of its peer institutions.

In line with this objective, the Women’s Recruitment Board was established last year as a student-staffed advisory body reporting to the Office of Undergraduate Admission.

“The purpose of the WRB is to help this office in planning and implementing recruitment strategies,” said Jennifer Johnson, assistant director for Special Recruitment Programs at the Office of Undergraduate Admission. “It is an advisory body that assists staff in planning events with high school students’ interests in mind.”

The WRB coordinates with the Office of Undergraduate Admission to conduct two yearly recruitment drives focused at different groups of prospective female applicants. It serves to market Tech’s many opportunities and challenges and to compliment the efforts of other groups across campus already doing the same.

One of these drives, FUTURES, is a day-long open house conducted in early March that caters to academically talented 10th and 11th grade girls seeking knowledge about the Georgia Tech experience. FUTURES features various events including campus tours as well as panel discussions on curriculum, careers, professional work experience, scholarships and study abroad programs.

Girls Night Out is an overnight stay program similar to Connect With Tech targeted at rising 11th grade girls. Over the summer, about 80 prospective freshmen are paired with student hosts and stay overnight in college dorms, attend typical classes and get a much more personal understanding of the Tech experience.

Apart from these official events, the activities of the board also include calling campaigns to remind prospective female students to apply to Tech and to personally congratulate successful applicants, thus reaching out and establishing a personal connection with them. WRB members and volunteers also staff college fair booths in high schools alongside admissions counselors, providing prospective students with more memorable experiences.

Such efforts are what encouraged first-year International Affairs major Jenna Castle to choose Tech.

“Last year, I received a personal call from a WRB member telling me that I was accepted here and also asking if I had any questions about Tech,” Castle said. “Talking to the WRB member on the phone and receiving personal attention really influenced my decision to come here. The student that I talked to helped dispel myths about Georgia Tech and also gave me really useful information about my major and campus life.”

“The strong impact that the WRB made on my decision inspired me to become a member this year so that I can help students with their college decisions and represent GT well,” she said.

So what do female applicants care about when choosing a college? According to a recent survey conducted by the Office of Undergraduate Admissions, of all the female applicants who were accepted to Tech but chose not to attend, most cited the reason “financial aid not sufficient.” The aid was not sufficient when compared to offers available from well-endowed private peer institutions such as Emory and Stanford.

Other significant reasons cited included “college too close to home” and “college too far from home.” These are two issues that the WRB hopes to address by communicating the personal experiences of board members and volunteers to wavering applicants.

“I tell the girls when I talk to them that even though home is only 20 minutes away, I really feel like I’ve moved away to college because I live on campus, alongside people from school,” Castle said.

Many students believe that Tech lowers admissions standards for females for the sake of balancing the male to female ratio. However, according to the Office of Undergraduate Admissions and Castle, Tech does not lower its standards for any students.

“A common myth is that women have lower admissions standards because they are women, and this is absolutely not true.

“All applications are evaluated blindly, based on merit only,” Johnson said.

Castle also addressed the scope of the board’s programs and its source of funding. “Recruitment efforts are privately funded by alumni who give money specifically for this cause,” she said.

While there are already large representations of women in some majors such as International Affairs and Modern Languages (72 percent female) and Biology (67 percent female), many other majors at Tech have significantly greater male representation. These include Mechanical Engineering (11 percent female) and Computer Engineering (5.5 percent).

In recognition of these facts, several academic units within Tech have already launched their own initiatives that seek to reach out to female applicants.

One such group which has outreach programs for prospective students is the College of Computing’s Women@CC.The undergraduate students that are part of Women@CC are part of the Undergraduate Women’s Advisory Board (UWAB). The UWAB attempts to welcome female computer science majors into Tech by hosting events which build a feeling of community.