She was the lone woman on her soccer team of graduate business students when they beat out 23 other business schools to win the championship.
“I was the token girl,” Jen Cressman said, laughing. “The guys were totally accepting of me.”
Though the number of women pursuing a Master’s of Business Administration degree at UCLA Anderson School of Management has jumped 10 percent in recent years, female enrollment is still low, as it has been historically, said Mae Jennifer Shores, assistant dean of Anderson MBA Admissions and Financial Aid.
Cressman attributes this discrepancy to the applicant pool, which she said has always been male-dominated.
“There’s a running joke that Anderson should be called “˜Manderson’,” she said.
Shores said women do not apply to MBA programs as much as they apply to other graduate programs for a number of reasons, including the impression that jobs are limited to consulting and investment banking.
Women, on average, are also at the age of starting a family when they are trying to attain an MBA, and it becomes hard to juggle family and school, Shores said.
“They want a degree that is flexible enough to ease out of the workforce after they get their MBA and come back into it later,” she said.
To further encourage women to enter the business field, the Anderson School is sponsoring a career lab targeted at undergraduate women. The lab will help educate women about the variety of career choices available with a business degree, Shores said.
Cressman said the main reason she was attracted to pursuing a business degree was the range of opportunities the degree would provide.
“You can explore every type of career option, and you can be a leader,” Cressman said. “Many clubs in Anderson are student-run.”
Aside from being on the MBA soccer team, Cressman is next year’s president of the Anderson Marketing Association, a first-year director for Challenge 4 Charity and a leader of the surf club.
“Girls here are definitely go-getters,” she said. “They have many opportunities to be leaders. Clubs like the Women’s Business Connection in Anderson and Forte definitely help that.”
The career lab will be a joint effort with the Forte Foundation, a consortium of major corporations and top business schools that directs women towards leadership roles, according to the foundation’s website.
The lab will feature a panel consisting of women who are already in the workforce. There will be a professional development workshop with a career counselor.
It will also provide opportunities for networking, said Lindsay Haselton, admissions officer for Anderson.
Though the event is targeted at undergraduate women, it is open to anyone who is interested, including men, Shores said.
She added that she wants to help women start thinking about business school and build networks with other women.
“Our goal as an MBA program is to broaden diversity of people in the program,” Shores said. “That way, the learning environment is enhanced with multiplicity of perspective, especially as business becomes more global.”