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10 Jul 2015

"why are international students less administrative universities like harvard"


In short, because there is only a limited number of international students they can admit, but relative to the number of international spots, there are A LOT more international applicants. The acceptance rate for international students are often less than 1/10 or even 1/20 compared to domestic applicants. For example, Stanford's international acceptance rate was < 1% when the domestic was still at 10%. 


Keep in mind not all international students are the same. Applicants from East Asia have it worst, but applicants from Africa and South America have it considerably easier. 

1) International students are less knowledgeable about American universities. As a result, most of them shoot for the top schools as "reach", but their target and safety schools vary a lot. So while an American student may pick 2-3 reaches, 3-5 targets, and 2-3 safeties, the international student is more likely to apply to 5+ reaches, and their targets tend to vary starting from colleges ranking 30 and below. Therefore, for colleges that are ranked 30 - 100, it may be easier for international students to get in. 

2) International students have little incentive to go to state schools. A lot of state schools have 3 tiers for tuition: in-state, out-of-state, and international. Often times, the state school costs almost as much as the private school. To put it another way, going to a less competitive university costs almost as much as going to a competitive university. Therefore, they have more incentive to try to go to a more competitive university. 


3) International students (at least ones from East Asia) tend to have similar profiles. Since most of us cannot compete with Americans in English/humanities, we tend to try to distinguish ourselves with math/science abilities. However, since college admissions is about building a diverse class, you want top math people from abroad AND from the US, so you can't take all the IMO/IOI gold medalists. People who may be top in English in their own country are likely still not that good relative to native speakers, so it makes them less competitive.

sources : Quara 
                                                                Thanking you. 

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