When were our first female students admitted?

Different schools on campus admitted women at different times. The university became fully coed in 1969, when women were at last admitted to the College of Arts and Sciences. The first record of female students at Georgetown is in the 1881-1882 catalog of the Medical Department, as our Medical School was then called. The catalog contains a list of students enrolled in the previous academic year. Included in that list are Annie E. Rice from Maine and Jeannette J. Sumner from Michigan. We know that, after a year, the two transferred to the Women's Medical College of Philadelphia and completed their medical education there, but the Medical Department records provide no clues as to how they came to be admitted or why they transferred. The two pioneering women subsequently returned to Washington and established the first dispensary here for poor women and children.