Graduate School Recommendations

Momwaitingfornew
Wed, 10 Aug 2011 09:20:12 +0000

The difficulty for international students depends on the program. Some, particularly in engineering, have a high percentage of international students while others have a low percentage. You should look at the graduate student profiles to see whether a program is international-friendly.

That said, admission to top programs is competitive for everyone, domestic and international. International students from certain countries are known to have high GRE scores no matter the undergraduate record, and so some programs won’t even consider GRE scores from those students (from those countries) to be a measure of anything concrete. They will look elsewhere in the application for distinguishing factors.

The reason that it’s tougher for international students is complex. For one, in certain fields the number of international applicants far outstrips the number of domestic applicants. If a program has two hundred applicants for twenty spots, and one hundred and fifty of those are international students, of course it’s going to be more competitive, even if a program splits its spots fifty-fifty between domestic and international students. Next, US programs cannot always determine the level of preparation when it comes to international students; programs are more likely to admit international students from universities with which they are familiar, and if you come from one they know nothing about, they may be reluctant to accept you. (This is when a publication may come in handy.) Third, programs that don’t accept a lot of students from your country may not be familiar with your country’s grading system. Those that DO take students from your country will know that, say, an 85 average is top notch. In the US grading system, it would not be. Fourth, many international applicants who apply to US programs are not qualified. For instance, without really understanding the US range of universities, international students may only apply to those they’ve heard of – say, Harvard, MIT, and Berkeley – without considering that their backgrounds aren’t strong enough for those universities. If you ARE qualified, you have a much better chance than other internationals. Let’s take that imaginary pool of 150 international students. If only 50 of them, including you, are qualified, then your chances of admission goes up dramatically despite the overall “tougher for internationals” stats. Of course, other factors come into play as well.

I recommend that you search the forum for last year’s international student grad admissions thread to see the results there. Many were accepted to top programs. You’ll be able to see their profiles and results to better gauge your own chances.