U.S. colleges and universities offer international students a large choice of programs and work opportunities.
Every year, over a million overseas students are lured to American schools and universities because of their diversified campuses, cutting-edge research opportunities, and academic programs.
According to the Open Doors 2024 Report on foreign Educational Exchange, first-time foreign student enrollment at US colleges and universities remained high, with 298,705 new international students in 2023-2024, which was comparable to the previous year’s total and pre-COVID-19 levels.
Jennifer Zhao from China says she has always been interested in American culture and education. Her short-term student exchange experience at St. George’s School in Rhode Island, however, made her “totally confident that I want to go to the U.S. for college.”
She is currently enrolled in New York University, where she is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in economics with a business studies minor, after applying to 17 American universities.
These are three of the main justifications for attending a college in the United States.
U.S. Degrees Have an Outstanding International Reputation
American colleges are among the world’s top-ranked institutions, with a global reputation.
“Higher education in the United States is still the gold standard for both personal and professional development and advancement,” says Linda Gentile, executive director of Carnegie Mellon University’s Office of International Education.
According to Richard Beatty, senior assistant provost for enrollment management at Stony Brook University—SUNY in New York, the United States leads the globe in higher education and is “setting a global standard for flexibility and research opportunities.”
The greatest number of Nobel Prize recipients “who were either born abroad or studying here at the time of their award” reside in the United States, according to Beatty, and some Stony Brook faculty members are among them.
The reputation of U.S. schools was a big draw for Eleni Kytoudi, who is from an agricultural village in northern Greece and the eldest child of farmers.
“After spending two summers in the U.S. at college preparation summer programs facilitated through my high school, I knew I wanted to come here,” says Kytoudi, who graduated with a degree in economics and government from Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania.
Many international students are drawn to U.S. schools for the training provided and high academic standards, which can be advantageous for job opportunities anywhere in the world.
A U.S. degree and work experience can help an international student stand out as a job applicant and “will show employers that they are adaptable, bilingual, experienced and willing to take on a challenge,” says Amy Malsin, vice president for university communications at The New School in New York. This can be critical when applying for jobs in their home country or when using connections in the U.S. to get work visa sponsorship.
Additionally, according to Amy Malsin, vice president for university relations at The New School in New York, an overseas student’s U.S. degree and work experience “will show employers that they are adaptable, bilingual, experienced and willing to take on a challenge,” making them stand out as a job applicant. When searching for jobs in their native country or using contacts in the United States to obtain sponsorship for a work visa, this might be crucial.
The Education System Is Flexible and Offers Research Opportunities
Another major reason to choose a college in the U.S. is the large variety of courses and programs, and the flexibility schools offer.
For example, unlike universities in the United Kingdom that require students to choose a major when applying and to remain in that field once enrolled, U.S. schools allow students to declare their major later and switch majors.
“There is much more flexibility in deciding majors and changing majors as interests and strengths are determined,” Beatty says. About 80% of students change their major, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. .
International undergraduate and graduate students also have many research opportunities at U.S. schools, experts say.
For instance, the University of California—Berkeley provides opportunities for students to interact with faculty engaged in cutting-edge research, says Ivor Emmanuel, director of the Berkeley International Office. Students are placed in an experiential learning environment that offers the latest research and teaching across multiple disciplines and “work closely with mentors, deepening their knowledge and skills,” he says.
During his master’s program in computer science at Stony Brook, Indian national Smeet Dinesh Chheda worked on a research project with Brookhaven National Laboratory through its affiliation with the university’s on-campus research laboratory, Exascallab.
“I received this wonderful opportunity to work and collaborate with an excellent researcher through the university,” adds Chheda, who is pursuing a Ph.D. in computer science. “I’d say that it would be much more difficult to get the same opportunity if it weren’t for the university lab.”
Chheda is a member of the Exascallab research group at the Institute for Advanced Computational Science, which collaborates with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.
U.S. Colleges Recruit International Students
In an effort to attract overseas students, several American colleges and universities are increasing their global participation initiatives.
According to Hannah Kim, director of international recruitment and admission at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania, the college finds and accepts international students “from a diverse array of countries, cultures, and backgrounds, which has resulted in four straight years of record applications from international students to the college.”
Kim claims that both in-person and online options have been used for recruiting in many of the same nations that the institution has traditionally hired from, including China, India, and Vietnam.
