Powered by mushrooming demand from China, applications from international students to American graduate schools finally rebounded this year to their 2003 levels, after which foreign-student applications plummeted because of tightening visa rules following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Overseas applications rose by 9 percent from 2009 to 2010, and initial offers of admission to foreign students also increased, by 3 percent, reversing a 1-percent dip last year, according to a new report released on Thursday by the Council of Graduate Schools.
But the report, “Findings From the 2010 CGS International Graduate Admissions Survey, Phase II: Final Applications and Initial Offers of Admission,” suggests a continuing—although slowing—erosion in offers of admission to students from India and South Korea, two of the three largest sending countries.
Offers of admission to prospective graduate students from India fell 4 percent in 2010, and offers of admission to students from South Korea dropped 7 percent. The decreases followed declines of 14 percent for each country in 2009.
The report’s author, Nathan E. Bell, director of research and policy analysis at the council, called the smaller reductions a hopeful sign. “The declines in offers weren’t nearly as bad as last year,” he said. “It might indicate we’re moving toward something more stable for next year.”
Offers of admission to students from China, meanwhile, clocked their fifth consecutive year of double-digit gains, climbing 16 percent.
China, India, and South Korea account for fully half of all non-U.S. citizens on temporary visas attending American graduate schools.
The graduate-school survey also tracks admission and application trends for students from the Middle East and Turkey because of the region’s geopolitical importance. Initial offers of admission to students in that part of the world, which accounts for about 6 percent of international students at American graduate schools, increased 10 percent in 2010.
Taken together, the data in the report, the second in an annual series of three on foreign-student applications, admissions offers, and enrollment decisions, paint a mixed picture.
On the one hand, the report shows that American graduate schools have finally clawed back from the precipitous declines charted in the survey’s first year, 2004. International applications bottomed out that year, falling 28 percent, and offers of admission to prospective foreign students dropped 18 percent.
This year’s 9-percent jump in foreign applications is the largest rate of increase since 2007. And 3-percent growth in initial offers of admission reverses last year’s 1-percent decline in final admissions offers. First-time international graduate enrollment was flat in 2009.
Such figures, the report’s author notes, “signify that students from abroad continue to value a U.S. graduate education.”
Tighter Competition, Unsustainable Growth
Still, Mr. Bell writes, “with continued competition for international students from other countries and an increased capacity for graduate education in some countries, U.S. graduate schools cannot assume we will always remain the destination of choice for students from abroad.”
Among the warning signals is the continuing deterioration in offers of admission to prospective Indian and South Korean students, although those declines show some signs of leveling out.
Mr. Bell also calls China’s vigorous growth, driven by an expansion of undergraduate education in that country, unsustainable. “We’re going to see a slowdown at some point, but I’m just not sure when,” he says.
In addition, there is a marked difference in the trend lines for those institutions that typically enroll large numbers of foreign graduate students and those that take in relatively few. At the 100 graduate schools with the most foreign students, applications for the fall of 2010 rose, on average, 9 percent, and offers of admission increased 5 percent. At institutions outside the top 100, by contrast, international applications rose 8 percent, but offers of admission slowed 1 percent.
The top 100 already enroll about 60 percent of such students, and the statistics suggest there could be a further concentration of foreign students at those relatively few universities with high name recognition and strong recruitment networks aboard.
The council surveyed its 494 American graduate-school members in June and July, with 249 institutions replying, for a 50.4-percent response rate. The responding universities account for about two-thirds of the 90,000 graduate degrees conferred to international students in the 2007-8 academic year.
The graduate-schools group also found that international applications increased across all broad fields of study, and initial offers of admission rose in all but one, life sciences.
For the second year in a row, the survey questioned responding institutions about American citizens and permanent residents. Although applications from domestic students climbed 9 percent in 2010, the same rate of increase as for overseas students, initial offers of admission to prospective American students fell 1 percent.
However, the report notes, American students are more likely to apply to graduate schools at the last minute than are their foreign counterparts, as they do not need to worry about securing a visa.
