The above quote and other comments in the A cautionary Tale & Question thread have given me great food for thought about when HBCUs should be suggested. @ucbalumnus specifically points to an often overlooked HBCU that offers good scholarships, which makes me wonder if HBCUs should be recommended to more international students (particularly POC) looking for financial aid to attend a US college or university.
(edit) What HBCUs offer aid (need-based and/or merit) to international students?
Which HBCUs would you recommend to an international and why?
Are there HBCUs with diversity as an institutional goal, and if so what type of diversity? (see Non-Black Students at HBCUs for some discussion along these lines)
(edit) If an international student does not need aid, which HBCUs would you recommend for consideration? I realize this is more difficult to answer since fit would come into play, but are there some HBCUs that offer more resources for international students than others?
For an international student looking for scholarships, what matters most is whether the collegeās scholarships are available to international students. Whether a collegeās scholarships are available to international students depends on the specific collegeās policy, regardless of whether it is an HBCU, HWCU, or neither.
Absolutely. I thought that was implied but must not have made that clear so thank you for spelling it out. I will add āWhat HBCUs offer aid to international students?ā
The school names here are linked to the scholarship info. When a āfull rideā is mentioned that means scholarships that cover tuition, room and board, and frequently books.
Alabama State offers scholarships up to a full ride.
Edited to clarify: There are no requirements listed on either of the websites with respect to limiting these scholarships to domestic applicants. Interested students should verify with each institution as to whether these scholarships are open to international students. If they do, please let us know.
Admittedly I donāt think of HBCUs - Iām sure thereās bias there as Iām not black. But certainly one doesnāt need to be black to attend. So itās a fair point noted. And a blind spot that needs to be corrected and a student can decide if thatās the right place for them, similar to any other school. Also, I donāt believe all the scholarships are auto. So weād need to learn school by school as well.
There are also PWI schools with great deals like Troy. Whether those deals include international I donāt know. But as a very regional school it often doesnāt come up even though the not quite stud students can get free tuition and housing.
Of course there are others who come on and write - but at Bama thereās only 600 Asians out of 38k - so when you try to offer up a possibility to meet a student need there is often a person to dissuade.
Your comments highlight exactly why Iām asking for input from posters more in tune with HBCUs. There are many regulars on CC who are not aware of opportunities at the HBCUs (myself included). Several of us have posted recently hoping to engage more informed posters so the CC community at large are more informed. In this post, Iām specifically addressing options for internationals because that came to mind in recent posts on other threads, but I hope to learn more in all the topics in this forum.
Great idea! I think it invaluable to provide internationals with financially viable options. I also think it important to provide nuanced context for these suggestions and take into consideration the posters stated preferences regarding fit. In my opinion it is incumbent upon anyone giving advice to not just solve one problem at the risk of creating another.
Many internationals are unfamiliar with cultural or historic differences across the country. These posters are reliant on us to provide context, broadly inform both pros and cons and consider their specific situations and preferences when making suggestions. Consequently one answer doesnāt fit all candidates.
For instance if a poster specifically requests a liberal environment, any suggestion of a school in the deep should also mention the reality that it is located in an extremely conservative state. Similarly if a student is from a small and underrepresented Asian country probably worth highlighting just how under represented they may feel attending school on the proverbial other side of the world, particularly if the entirety of āAsiansā at a school is less than 2 percent.
Good advice requires providing the entire picture not just the part that favors a desired solution. I think several of the suggestions in this thread represent ideal options to be juxtaposed against several of those most frequently offered.
I work with quite a few URM students, most low-income (pell eligible, many either EFC zero or close to it), with a wide range of academic abilities.
HBCUs (4 year) generally donāt make many of their lists, unless they are being recruited for their sport, because as a whole the HBCUs arenāt known for providing good financial aid. They are generally not affordable for a low income student with modest academics.
I had one black student-athlete (from suburban Chicagoland) transfer after her first year at an HBCU in the Deep South, a school most here would have heard of, due to what she called āblack on blackā racism. She also used the word bullied and was miserable. I donāt understand enough of what truly happened to give a just and nuanced explanation of the situation, as we were scrambling to find her an affordable athletic option in June, for the Fall, which we ultimately were able to do.
Lastly, the higher stat URMs athletes I work with often target selective PWIs, because thatās what they aspire to.
One HBCU that does give out quite a bit of financial aid to international students is Howard University. They gave out over 118 million dollars in Scholarships and Grants for 2021-2022 school year (data from 2021-2022 Common Data Set) and after subtracting out the Federal aid (international students are not eligible for Federal aid) they still gave out 99 million dollars in Institutional Aid (not counting athletic awards). Both of my kids know international students who have institutional aid awards and scholarships at Howard. International students applying to Howard can fill out the International Student Financial Aid Application (ISFAA). I am attaching a link that goes into more detail about the opportunities for Financial support from Howard University and good luck hunting for information at other HBCUs.
Here is IPEDS net COA for Howard (most recent is 2019-20).
I know these are averages, and I know for some students things work out. But there arenāt many families making under $75K who can afford $39-$43K net COA (so after Pell grant and student loans).
I would encourage a high academic student in these income ranges to apply, and thatās it.
Thank you for the detailed information, @Mwfan1921.
With what you have experienced with the students you work with, would you suggest HBCUs to non-US citizens turning to CC for help with college application options? For example, my general observation is that the majority of CC chance/match requests stem from the Indian subcontinent. Should CC āadvisersā include HBCUs in our suggestions to those students?
As pointed out above, first and foremost we need to understand which schools offer aid to internationals. Short of checking each individual website, Iām not sure how to do that. I could not find a list online so I hoped others may have first hand experience to share. Your insight about aid typically being very limited at HBCUs suggests perhaps they are not realistic options.
I looked up two schools (AAMU and Howard) that do offer scholarships and aid to international students. I have no idea how competitive or generous the aid may be.
Alabama A&M international students - Since located in Huntsville, would this be worth a shot for my example of an Indian student if interested in aerospace engineering? Would the potential fits in the financial and academic areas be enough to offset āculture shockā?
So for my hypothetical Indian kid interested in aero, do we suggest both Howard and AAMU while explaining the geographic/political/campus culture/access etc differences of the campuses and surrounding areas?
What my kids have shared with me is that the āaverageā international student at Howard tends to be in the top quarter of all students statistically, so they are getting more institutional aid than the āaverageā domestic student at Howard. I am not quite sure how true that is, but I definitely notice the international presence on campus during my visits.
Regarding Howard, about a decade ago or prior, it used to be one of the colleges on the list of those offering automatic full tuition to full ride scholarships for meeting certain stat levels (GPA, SAT/ACT). These were apparently available to international students, since there was an article in a major DC newspaper about how students from Nepal noticed and started attending. However, the automatic big scholarships are no longer listed (as is the case for many other (not necessarily HBCU) colleges, that used to offer them).
Could be, but international students typically are relatively affluent. Howard CDS says 3.2% of the student body is international students. Canāt imagine that is moving the needle on the averages from IPEDs, especially at the lower income levels.
Well, I wonāt tell others what to do. But I tend to not recommend HBCUs on these boards. For the international full pay students who seem engaged in the process and willing to do some digging, an HBCU could make sense. Up to them.
IMO UAH would likely be a better fit, and offer more merit/lower net COA for many students. Both schools could be culture shocks for an international Indian student to be sure. And, I know you were just making an example, but aerospace is a particularly tricky major for internationals because they canāt get the necessary security clearances to intern/work at many of the aerospace firms.
I think I noticed the presence of international students because my 2 students have/had full scholarships. The international students, full scholarship kids and athletes are mainly the only juniors and seniors that receive on-campus housing. My kids seem to think the largest group of international students come from the Caribbean and seem to have students from all income brackets, because some of those students are working their way through Howard.
Yeah, Howard used to have a large number of Nepalese students, but those numbers have dropped over the last 5 years as Howard has spread out the institutional aid more and more towards students with more financial need. There is still money out there for students, just not enough to give as many full ride scholarships.
In looking at the Most, Least Affordable HBCUs link that @Mwfan1921 shared, I wonder what the results at non-HBCU schools are for schools that serve a similar number of Pell-eligible or low income students. Average loan amounts might be higher (Iām not sure) than at some PWIs, but is it because the school offers less aid or because the students have so much greater need. Considering that many low-income students essentially only have Pell Grants as their free money, it doesnāt seem as terrible when seeing a $30k debt when one considers that was for covering the entire COA of four years of attendance. And if these students did not have the academic records to get into the PWIs with huge endowments that are very generous with financial need awards, then I wonder what other 4-year institutions they could have attended with a better price point.
I was looking at U. of Maryland - Eastern Shore earlier, and this small school has students from 55 different countries. This is not one of the āpremierā HBCUs (Howard, Spelhouse) but it has far more international countries represented than one might expect. Even though IPEDS data indicates that only 2% of the student body is international, I suspect that the 2% makes itself felt with a small enrollment.
It saddens me to hear about the black student-athlete that @Mwfan1921 spoke of, but I have heard from some of my colleagues about people who experienced (or knew of) the paper bag racism. I am not shocked that this happened, but I suspect that it might be more prevalent at some campuses more than others, or that it may be within a certain segment of a school population, with that segment smaller or larger, depending on the school.
But I think that HBCUs, like many of the college types discussed more commonly on CC, are not all the same with respect to campus culture and student vibes. Many people on the board can talk about how the feel of one college can be very different from another even if the stats of the student population are largely similar (pre-professional, preppy, athletic, artsy, etc). I think that it would behoove people to learn more about the different vibes of various HBCUs as well since thatās an important part of fit, too.
Agreed, taking the $27K in ug student loans isnāt life changing for many students, it should be doable.
But looking at the Howard IPEDs numbers I posted above, far greater than the student loans would be necessary for most of those families making under $110K to afford the net COA (again on average).
Exactly. A four year residential college experience isnāt an option for some of these students. But, they can consider going to CC for two years, trade training and apprenticeships, certificate programs like the ones Google and Microsoft are providing, or entering the military. Each one of those alternative options can represent the best fit for some students.
Thank you for this link, it is helpful to me as I continue to learn every day.
I agree with your fit/culture/vibe point on HBCUsā¦they are as varied as PWIs. But as we have talked about on many threads, most students donāt get to consider fit when they are choosing a college because parental finances and their ability/willingness to pay rule the day.
