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More than a dozen D.C.-area colleges and universities will be subpoenaed by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in an effort to determine whether undergraduate admissions offices discriminate against women in an effort to correct gender imbalances on campus, a spokeswoman for the commission said.

Subpoenas will be issued to the 19 schools, that include Howard and Georgetown, soon, and the study is slated to be completed by the summer, said Lenore Ostrowsky, chief of public affairs for the commission. Discrimination of applicants based on gender would violate Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments, a federal gender-equality law that covers all educational institutions that receive federal funding, except for undergraduate admissions at private colleges that are not professional or technical institutions.

The commission voted on Dec. 16 to subpoena a diverse set of colleges and universities, randomly selected to represent higher education nationally. The selections were also based on proximity to Washington, and not on actual accusations of discrimination. Restrictions on the commission’s subpoena power dictate that all subjects of the study must be located within 100 miles of where the commission holds its meetings.

The list of schools is divided into six broad institutional categories that include four historically black institutions including Howard, three religious schools, three “highly selective” private schools, including Georgetown and Johns Hopkins, one “very selective” private school, the University of Richmond, four “moderately selective” private colleges and four “moderately selective” public schools.

The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that the University of Richmond was deliberately included in the study because of media reports several years ago that the school was intentionally admitting more males than females.

Private liberal arts colleges in particular have in the past been accused of intentionally admitting more men in order to balance the gender makeup. GW’s freshman student body is about 56-57 percent female and 43-44 percent male, University spokeswoman Michelle Sherrard said.

To study the gender gap, the commission will subpoena data from the colleges on the list, requiring information like SAT scores, high school GPAs, whether the student was admitted, waitlisted, or rejected, whether the applicant actually enrolled, and, of course, the student’s gender.

In addition to its primary goal of examining admission rates, the study will also look at financial aid offers, athletic scholarships, and other possible forms of gender discrimination.

Preliminary data from news reports on the study show that an admissions gender gap exists in some schools. The Washington Post conducted an informal study of admission data from 12 schools in the region and found that seven schools had admitted women at a lower rate than men in the last two years, four had admitted men at a lower rate, and one had admitted women at a higher rate one year, but men in the other.

The article has been revised to reflect that Title IX covers all educational institutions that receive federal funding, except for undergraduate admissions at private colleges that are not professional or technical institutions.