Tracking Retention & Academic Success: Listing of Colleges and Universities with LGBTQ Identity Questions as an Option on Admission Applications & Enrollment Forms

Compiled by Genny Beemyn, Campus Pride Trans Policy Clearinghouse Coordinator

Updated 11/25/2014

In 2013, Campus Pride issued in partnership with ACPA-College Student Educators International a position paper titled “An Institutional Responsibility: Tracking Retention & Academic Success of Out LGBT Students.”  The statement posits: “In order to best serve the needs of out LGBT college students, it is imperative that colleges and universities give these students the option to self-identify at the point of college admission or other enrollment activity. This way the campus can take responsibility for the LGBT student experience, their academic retention, safety, and success from the beginning like we do other campus populations.”

Check the updated listing online.

Undergraduate Admissions Applications

California two-year colleges: asks students to “please indicate your sexual orientation,” and gives the choices of straight/heterosexual, gay or lesbian/homosexual, bisexual, other, and decline to state. It also asks an optional question, “Do you consider yourself transgender?”

Duke University: has an optional essay question on its supplemental application: “If you’d like to share a perspective you bring or experiences you’ve had to help us understand you better—perhaps related to a community you belong to, your sexual orientation or gender identity, or your family or cultural background—we encourage you to do so.”

Elmhurst College: ask an optional question, “Would you consider yourself to be a member of the LGBT community?”

Northeast Illinois University: ask an optional question, “Do you identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or questioning (GLBTQ)?”

Ohio State University: ask an optional question, “Do you identify as a part of the LGBTQ community?”

University of Iowa: ask an optional question, “Do you identify with the LGBTQ community?” Students can also identify their gender as male, female, or transgender.

Washington two-year colleges: asks an optional question about sexual orientation, and gives students the opportunity to identify their gender as feminine, masculine, transgender, androgynous, gender neutral, other, and prefer not to answer.

Graduate School Admissions Applications

Oregon State: ask students for their gender identity, and has an optional question on whether they identify as LGBQ.

Penn’s Law School: offers an optional question, “Do you identify as a lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender person?”

University of California, Santa Cruz: asks an optional question, “What is your sexual orientation?,” and gives the choices of bisexual, gay, heterosexual/straight, lesbian, and queer.

Campus Pride is the leading national educational organization for LGBTQ and ally college students and campus groups building future leaders and safer, more LGBTQ-friendly colleges and universities. The organization provides resources and services to thousands of college students and nearly 1400 campuses annually. Learn more online at campuspride.org.