American Universities to Recruit More International Students Locally

The most surprising piece you’ll read today is basically the fact that international applicants for American University in Washington DC, 23% of them had attended high schools in the US itself. The amount of freshman undergraduate international applicants for this year was a lot, but most of them were found to be locally situated itself.

At the conference in NAFSA: Association of International Educators, the main fact was to discuss and increase the ratio of the international applicants who were close to home, either studied in US high schools or were there for some kind of short courses, in order to increase the diversity and potential of the students.

By far, China is the leading country from where the majority of the international students for the university come, followed by South Korea, Vietnam, Mexico, and others.

For the year 2016, as stated, it was seen that 72% of students were there on an F visa and the rest 28% were there on a J visa for degree-seeking, and exchange students respectively. But some reports suggest a steady, but sizeable nevertheless, decline in the number of international students every year since 2016.

An associate from the Association of Boarding Schools said that the boarding schools of the US saw a gradual 4% increase from March 2018-19 with respect to international applicants, where China was losing its grip on the 72% margin, with the advent of students originating from Spain and Italy. He also went on to state that more than half of the international students who stay in the boarding schools of the US are capable enough to pay for the college admissions in full or at least if not full, in 60%.

Personnel of the American University mentioned that, out of this year’s international freshman students who also attended US high schools, 58% were from China and the other 42% were from other nationalities.

In her presentation, she presented the idea for coordinating with the domestic admissions team, to make two groups, one which stated the domestic applicants who wanted to go abroad and the other one was the list of the US high schools that gave the highest concentration of the international student.

She went on to mention some important factors that American was actually looking for in the international students from the US high schools. For example, the amount of time they spent in the US high school which would in turn answer the question of their adaptability and also how long they were situated in the US.

Another question she wanted to ask the applicants was the thoroughness of their previous educational system and the one they were currently in. That would also help her evaluate the applicants beyond the general English Proficiency test and would test their spoken English via email or over the phone as well.

The director of the International English Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder stated that the possible trick could be used by introducing short term students to degree-seeking students and introducing them to new technology so as to convert the short term students to a long term student for the university. He cautioned everybody as well that this method would take a lot of surrounding cost, but the effects of this would be maximum.