The School of Public Health and Health Services and the Law School are stepping up recruitment efforts among GW undergraduates this year, school officials said.

With more student interest in the two schools, SPHHS and the Law School plan to hold events focused on reaching out to students already on campus.

“Those students know what they’re getting into,” said Jane Smith, director of admissions at SPHHS, referring to GW undergraduates. “They have friendship groups established, and they know how to get places, know how to take advantage of the D.C. area. It is nice for them.”

In each of the last three years, about 28 undergraduate students have returned to GW to obtain an advanced public health degree. At the Law School, 210 out of the about 2,000 students were GW undergraduates.

“We appreciate that GW undergraduates are already on the campus and are connected to the larger GW family,” said Matthew Dillard, a senior admissions counselor from the Law School. “We welcome the undergrads to visit us because we are right here.”

He said his school will have an open house this spring exclusively for GW undergraduates.

“This will be the first year that we’ve held a particular event that will provide information and be a welcome to the Law School for our undergrads in particular,” Dillard said.

SPHHS already uses several recruitment techniques to take advantage of its unfettered access to GW students.

“All the students who are public health majors or minors as undergrads are put into respective listservs,” Rhineberger said. “The office then sends out periodic e-mails offering opportunities to come and speak with us about questions regarding graduate school in general, admissions to our program or about making public health a part of their career.”

Jane Smith, SPHHS director of admissions, said the graduate SPPHS does not regularly travel to other universities for graduate fairs, but holds recruitment activities in D.C. that involve one-on-one meetings with prospective students.

“That is easier to do with all of our students here, because we can readily get to them,” she said. “These students are our students, so it is easier for us to provide these services for them.”

William DeLancey, a second-year graduate student who received his undergraduate degree from GW in 2007, was not exposed to the new recruitment efforts.

“As an undergraduate I didn’t hear about the graduate program,” he said.

It was the familiar territory that convinced DeLancey to continue his studies at GW.

“I already had my GWid, an e-mail and I knew the area,” he said. “There are so many technical things as a new student that you just didn’t need to do. It didn’t feel like a transition at all.”