Impact of International Students and Study Abroad

College Search & Lists
1

<p>The New York Times has interesting data on the schools that enroll the highest number/% of international students. For example, international students make up at least 25% of the enrollment at Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, Carnegie-Mellon, and MIT. The NYT data also lists the schools with the highest number/% of students who study abroad.
Here’s the link:
[The</a> New York Times > Education > Image > Exchange Students](<a href=“The New York Times > Education > Image > Exchange Students”>The New York Times > Education > Image > Exchange Students)</p>

<p>Questions for current students/recent grads:

  1. Do you have international students as friends?
  2. What impact have international students had on your personal educational experience?
  3. What impact have the enrollment of international students had on your school?
  4. If you studied abroad, what impact did it have for you personally and academically?
  5. If your school has many students who study abroad, what has been the academic and social impact of this on your school?</p>
2

<ol>
<li>I had international students as friends.</li>
<li>Exposure to different cultures and education systems, mostly.</li>
<li>Nothing pervasive, as far as I’m concerned. We had about the same number of international students as students from NY.</li>
<li>Didn’t, those who did (at Brown and amongst friends from home) have had varying experiences, almost always gaining a lot personally and socially, academically sometimes 0, sometimes a lot.</li>
<li>Nothing huge-- housing junior year is interesting. Senior theses can be more interesting.</li>
</ol>

3

<p>

It’s less interesting when you realize that </p>

<p>1) Those numbers factor in all students, not just undergraduates.
2) There are many more international students at the graduate level than undergraduate.</p>

<p>Only 10-11% of Harvard undergraduates are international students, according to both its admissions website and CDS. Compare to tiny College of the Atlantic (not listed), where internationals make up 13% of undergraduates and 60% study abroad.</p>

4

<p>It may be less interesting to you. Nonetheless, even the presence of large numbers of foreign graduate students presumably has an impact on an institution. Granted, this would be a different impact than if majority of the foreign students were undergrads or if they were enrolled in a small, primarily undergraduate, institution.</p>