I have always been wondering whether top schools(except UCs and UIUC) put specific cap on no. of international students during admission periods, or they just admit as much as they can until they can’t anymore.
I know MIT does but I m not sure about other schools. Thoughts?
There’s no specific quota, BUT each college has a limited space for its incoming freshman class, which varies very little from year to year and since the international applicant pool is so tough, very few internationals get in each year. I’d think that around 10% of the incoming freshman class is international at top schools.
Of course there are caps driven by political “optics”. Since these schools enjoy property tax exemptions & non-profit tax-privileged status subsidized by American taxpayers, they have a political sensitivity to not to be filled with too many int’l students. Otherwise, you can trust that citizens will be calling their congressmen to pressure them to revoke these schools’ non-profit status.
Of course there are quotas/caps – that’s not even in question. Simply look at the proportional growth in int’l applications vs. the static levels of int’l admits over the years. It’s a zero sum game – admit more int’l, admit less domestics. US Colleges have an overriding agenda to serve domestics first.