Interesting that some top universities have 20%+ of student body from outside the U.S.
Rochester – 27%
BU, CMU and NYU – 22%
Brandeis – 20%
Many top-tier universities are 10% to 15% international. What’s to stop top universities from admitting 1/3 or more of their classes from outside the U.S. if they add tremendous diversity?
Does having a rich mix of international students provide a positive aspect to a U.S. based college experience? We have a friend from Spain whose D20 speaks four languages and is well travelled. She would seem like a terrific target if she had wanted to study in the U.S. and more universities offered need blind admission to international students, or at least more institutional financial support.
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Do I think having more international diversity on campus is a positive? Absolutely!
Do I think universities are admitting international students for some altruistic reason? No. Many universities like international students because they are full pay. There are only a small handful of schools that are need blind for international students in the US.
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My daughter went to a school with 33% foreign students. The students add to the flavor of the school, literally with foods from their countries and also with festivals and holidays they celebrate.
However, there is not a lot of mixing outside the classroom. I asked my daughter about it and she said the language barrier is often too much. If she socialized with foreign students at all, they were usually from English speaking countries and usually athletes (very cute English golfers!)
You probably mean “that give good financial aid for international students in the US”. Many are need blind for admission of international students, but give no or little financial aid to them.
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Then there are the handful of institutions that are need-aware but meet 100 percent of demonstrated need of all students. Their international mix may be lower.
While US students may associate with each other based on athletics, socioeconomics, ethnicity, etc., it seems that it’s less common for international students to integrate with the student body at large. You need to have forced study groups to make shared learning more likely. Maybe a high TOEFL score isn’t a great gauge of one’s ability to fluidly integrate.
I recall a top MBA admissions event from 25 years ago where the director said that they don’t offer many student abroad or exchange programs because they expected students to already be worldly. In fact, around 60% spoke more than two languages fluently.
Some colleges spend more than the full tuition on each student. Adding more international full-pay students presumably wouldn’t help these colleges financially. Conversely, the colleges (NYU, USC, BU, etc.) that enroll a large percentage of international full-pay students probably spend less, perhaps much less, than the full tuition on each of their students. Coincidentally, these are the same colleges that tend to charge higher tuitions than their peers.
@tristatecoog , I think that some of these statistics probably cover both undergraduate and graduate students. My husband, who is a foreign national, got his Ph.D. at Rochester. One of the things that attracted him was the fact they didn’t require TOEFL scores in the Economics department (probably do now!). Rochester was able to attract very high-quality graduate students with this approach, and his thesis advisor was later awarded the Order of the Rising Sun for all of the Japanese economists he had educated. I actually met my husband at Rochester, so in my personal experience adding international students to the mix had a very positive aspect. Kidding aside, that was my first experience of working and studying in an international group, and it was really a life-changing experience for me. My son is currently studying at a Midwest LAC. Although he is a US citizen, he has lived his whole life in Japan, so people probably see him as international. He has the advantage of being a native speaker of English, however, which makes it easy for him to interact with everybody - kind of user-friendly “international-lite”. His school also has a large contingent of Asian students who do not have good conversational English, and they seem to be much more isolated. I am curious as to whether they become more integrated over four years.
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Last year’s class at Rochester had 22% international and 4% permanent resident. Last year may have been tougher due to Covid and international restrictions.
@tkoparent a school with a high mix of students like your son would be a great experience.