In our recent post on First-Year Women at the Nation’s Leading Research Universities, WIAReport found that women made up about 46 percent of the students in the 2015 entering classes at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the California Institute of Technology, and Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. All three of these institutions have extensive offerings in STEM disciplines where historically women have been underrepresented.
The Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta has had very low numbers of women in its student body. The latest data from the U.S. Department of Education for the 2014-15 academic year show that women make up just over one third of the undergraduate student body.
But it appears that significant progress is on the horizon. In 2015, women made up 41 percent of all students admitted under Georgia Tech’s early action admissions plan. This was an all-time high. But this year, 48 percent of all students admitted under the early action admissions plan are women.
Rick Clark, director of undergraduate admissions, stated that “when we talk about wanting to diversify a class, we don’t just mean demographically, we’re talking in terms of curriculum and major selection. Just about every applicant can do the work to make it here. But we also have to look at what their impact as a student is going to be, and how they’re living out our campus ideals of progress and service.”