Due to financing and visa difficulties, admission offers to international graduate students fell this year an average of 3 percent across U.S. graduate schools, according to a recent report released by the Council of Graduate Schools.
But most of Penn’s graduate programs have yet to exhibit this national trend.
Not only has the number of international applicants to the Annenberg School for Communication remained fairly consistent over the past three years, the school received 47 more international applications this year than in 2008. Since 2007, the percentage of international students accepted has also risen from 2.5 to 7 percent.
Annenberg Assistant Dean for Graduate Studies Joanne Murray attributed the increase to current economic conditions and extensive electronic recruitment efforts.
She also noted the difficulty of “distilling trends” in a program the size of Annenberg’s, which admits at most 21 students annually.
The School of Design has also “noticed an increase in international students, applicants and matriculants,” according to Director of Admissions Joan Weston.
Weston speculated that the increase is “partly due to the recent shifts in world economies and a lessening up of travel restrictions that were put in place after 9/11.”
Likewise, according to Penn Law Assistant Dean for Graduate Programs Matthew Parker, international applicants have been “going up by approximately 7 to 10 percent each year,” partly because “the applicant pool is so diverse that they can weather economic ups and downs” since certain concerns “may not appear in certain parts of the world.”
Nor has Wharton seen a “significant movement in either direction in any applicant pool,” said Jacqueline Zavitz, MBA admissions senior associate director. She named Wharton’s high ranking and strong loan program as possible factors for the lack of change.
By contrast, School of Nursing Associate Professor Lorraine Tulman said the school’s “international applicant pool … was not as strong as in previous years,” though “why that [is] and whether [the trend] will continue cannot be determined at this point.”
Nonetheless, because the program admits only 12 to 15 students per year, Tulman said, “a small fluctuation in numbers equals a large percentage, making it difficult to plot a trend.”
The School of Medicine also witnessed a decline in both the application and admittance rates of international students. Only one international applicant was admitted to the program this year.
Those U.S. graduate schools that are experiencing a declining number of international applicants, College Confidential Senior Advisor Sally Rubenstone said, can attribute it to both the reduction of H-1B visas issued annually by the government and current domestic economic conditions — since students are less likely to be able to find work in the U.S. after they graduate.
However, she affirmed that while these factors may have motivated some international students to look elsewhere for graduate school, “the U.S. is still a very attractive destination.”
“If those impediments diminish in the future,” Rubenstone wrote in an e-mail, “my best guess is that the U.S. won’t have permanently lost a significant share of international graduate students to other nations.”
