Sep 26, 2014 02:29 PM EDT By J Baulkman, UniversityHerald Reporter

The Graduate School at Northwestern University in Illinois announced Thursday that it will ask applicants about their sexuality.

The new question on its application for admission will ask applicants if they consider themselves to be members of the LGBTQ community. The university does not ask undergraduate applicants about their sexuality.

"Our goal in adding the question is that in asking, we can better know the makeup of our community and address more specifically the needs and concerns within it," according to the school's website.

Northwestern University's graduate school joins only a handful of colleges and universities around the country that asks a question about sexual orientation on its application.

Applicants can answer or ignore the question as they choose.

School officials said the aim of asking applicants a question on sexuality is to better know the makeup of their college community and, thus, to better understand and serve the needs of all its students.

"It's important for us but also for others to move in this direction, as well," Dwight McBride, dean of The Graduate School at Northwestern University, said in a statement. "If we don't ask the question, we are not building a data archive and, therefore, have no way of knowing what the needs of our populations and sub-populations in our communities are -- beyond guessing and anecdote."

The university's Office of Research and Analysis collects and stores this information and "can help us to track growth in this population and help us use data to inform our allocation of resources to create appropriate programming and support services accordingly," according to the school's website.

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