What's up with International Enrollment at US Universities?

Percentage Increase in International Enrollment at Various Universities since 2004 based on

http://highereddatastories.blogspot.com/

Negative
Stanford: -1.37% (Rose sharply between 2008 and 2011 and then plummeted, Maybe the Economic crisis?)
** Under 10%**
UT Austin: 5.65%
Caltech: 9.89%
** Under 20%**
Vanderbilt 12.33%
Notre Dame: 17.89% (Big spike since 2012)
Penn: 19.75%
UVA: 16.2%
over 20%
Harvard: 24.11%
Tufts: 23.82%
Yale: 28.84%
Michigan: 28.74%
over 30%
MIT: 32.53%
over 40%
Princeton: 40.67%
UChicago: 40.86%
Northwestern 40.14%
Cornell: 48.10%
over 60%
Dartmouth: 65.62%
Brown: 65.5%
WUSTL: 67.86%
over 70%
Duke: 71.92%
Johns Hopkins 72.11%
USC: 78.6%
over 90%
CMU 95.17%
over 100%
Columbia: 101.2%
Berkeley: 129%
Rice: 133.8%
Emory 150.7%
Georgetown: 108.6%
UCLA: 149.3%
UIUC: 103.4%
NYU: 187.6%

The trend is that enrollment is generally increasing everywhere. This will make it harder for US students to get into these universities, because the number of seats is not increasing proportionally.

But clearly there is a stratification among Universities wrt international enrollment. Some are growing much more rapidly than others.

Given that International students are usually full pay (of course, this is total international, undergrad and grad, so this may not be entirely true for some schools), I wonder whether that says anything about how the Universities are approaching their budgets.

Have some Universities also increased their name recognition abroad and thus seeing an increased interest from International students?

Either way, any insights on how this is affecting classroom discussions, diversity issues, study abroad etc?

Regardless of if Unis are increasing their branding overseas, it’s a conscious decision if they decide to raise the no. of seats available to internationals.

You’ve listed generally higher tier schools with higher academic standards. The impact on classroom discussions is probably less than at middle tier schools where kids are coming with poorer English skills.

Could be for the same reason many state schools are increasing the number of out of state students…full pay.

I didn’t dig down to the data but your list only has the delta. What is the actual level at the mentioned schools? If a school had 1% admit and raised it to 2% – that’s a 100% rise in admit rate. But 2% is still rather tiny overall.

Simply displaying the admit rate delta is of limited utility. It shows the direction and growth on the part of the admissions office but not relative size of international student populations. The admit rate does not equal actually enrolled students. Some schools might need to admit a disproportionate no. of internationals in order to maintain a certain level of allocated slots. Not saying you’re responsible to dig up all this data but there are limitations in the list you supplied.

Right, and combining grad with undergrad leads to virtually useless numbers.

In general, the elite privates have all gone up to roughly 10% internationals in undergrad, and how much they have changed is mostly dependent on how much they had in 2004.

The number of international undergrads at good state schools has exploded as state funding as the percentage of the budget of publics has shrunk (unis have to make up for the missing revenue some how).

To the OP: how easy it is for American kids to get in is actually more dependent on birth year. A little over 3.1M American babies born in 1975 vs. almost 4.2M born in 1990, for instance.

There are many posts on this forum from foreign students applying to US colleges “needing a lot of financial aid.” They must be getting it somewhere.

NYU opening NYU-Abu Dhabi and NYU-Shanghai might have contributed to its international student increase, although those schools are much smaller than the main campus and not 100% international.

The top US schools still keep international representation artificially low (5-10%).

Why is that artificially low? They don’t have to accept any!

It’s more like +/- 20%.

Sweeping generalizations don’t help. Some graduate programs have a high percentage of international students. Others don’t. Some colleges have +10% international undergrads, some have 20%, some have 1%.

@HRSMom that’s not how universities work. International students need substantially higher scores than US citizens to get into the top schools. A lot of these kids are exceptionally smart and are vital to the universities as students and as future alumnis. So don’t worry, if a foreigner take your kid’s seat at Stanford he will certainly be multiple orders of magnitudes smarter.

^Cute: Please do continue to tell me how unis work…I only got degrees from 3 of them. I might have missed something that someone who has not yet attended didn’t:).

@WISdad23, a ton of foreign students need fin aid, but that doesn’t mean that many get them.

I understand. But we have a couple million high school seniors looking for spots in colleges. So the top 1% of high school seniors is about 20,000 kids, many looking for spots at top schools. That is not many kids when you consider the populations of India and China, especially if there is shred of hope for financial aid. Even without aid, that’s a lot.

As an aside, it is amazing to me, given the demand for education in developing countries, that very few American college and universities export their brand. Those that do tend to focus on the top of the market. Very few industries are as inefficient no doubt relating to governmental and regulatory interference among other factors.

Full pay, full pay, full pay. A few colleges at the very top like to brag about how many countries are represented on campus, so that is a little slice. But follow the money. It is obvious.

@WISdad23, I’m not sure what your point is. Yes, there are 20K in the top 1% here but the elite privates restrict their international population in undergrad to roughly 10% (compare with 1/3rd or 1/4 international at the top UK unis). State schools are a different story as states have cut back on funding of publics so they have increased their international (and pretty much always full-pay) population by a lot.

Top elites and good research U’s and colleges all through the selectivity spectrum in the US do market internationally.

10% is a lot. And some schools are drifting higher, maybe 15%.

Think again:

Harvard: 731 of 6700 = 10.91%
Yale: 11% international ([cite](http://oir.yale.edu/sites/default/files/factsheet_2015-16.pdf))
Princeton: 579 of 539 = 10.74%
University of Chicago: 13.34% ([cite](https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/page/profile-class-2018))
Williams: 7% international ([cite](http://admission.williams.edu/files/Williams-College-2017-Profile1.pdf))
Amherst: 9% international ([cite](https://www.amherst.edu/admission/apply/international/enrollment))

@WISdad23, 10% affects American applicants almost not at all.
So instead of having a 10% shot at an Ivy/equivalent, you’d have a 9% shot.

I’m not sure in what world that is a big difference.