For senior Laura Forton, it’s all about shaking hands, making eye contact and knowing a thing or two about sports.

Having spent her summer working as a technical analyst at Smith Barney, a subsidiary of Citigroup Inc., Forton said that being the only girl in a sea of ties and suits motivated her to work even harder in an initially intimidating environment.

But Forton is far from the only college woman going the extra mile to earn a college degree and snag a career, and men are falling behind.

At 58 percent nationally, women now make up a majority of college students. Only a generation before, they lagged significantly behind men.

As of 2003, 30 percent of women in the 25- to 29- year old age group had college degrees. Only 25 percent of men in the same group could say the same.

At the University of Pennsylvania, 55 percent of the College of Arts and Sciences’ Class of 2010 is female, as are 95 percent of School of Nursing freshmen.

And although women are still a minority in Wharton and the School of Engineering and Applied Science — where the freshmen are 36 and 32 percent female, respectively — many seem just as ambitious as Forton.

Even for fields where women are in the minority, many are working to ensure they’re noticed when they graduate.

Last year, 55 percent of the University’s Career Services’ counseling appointments were taken by women, according to Career Services director Patricia Rose.

Women are more likely to come in to seek advice and have their resumes checked, Rose said.

But when it comes to deciphering what these statistics mean, many say that even having a slight majority of women on campus won’t mean these women are landing top-notch jobs.

As long as you have a culture wherein women are predominantly seen as responsible for childbearing and homemaking, you aren’t going to achieve workplace equity, said Donna Phillips of the American Council on Education, an advocacy group.

Phillips added that just because there are more women getting degrees doesn’t necessarily mean that there are fewer men doing the same thing.

Students, too, have noticed the challenges faced by women in the workforce.

Girls definitely work harder to gain recognition, said Wharton freshman Lindsay Eierman.