| By niralshah - Feb 21st, 2007 at 2:42 pm EST |
| Also listed in: Campus Progress Blog |
Tags: admissions, affirmative action, diversity, financial aid, international students
An article in my school’s daily paper addresses efforts by international students to change the college’s admissions policy. Currently, the applications of all North American (US, Canada, Mexico) students are processed independently of their financial aid applications. This is not true for international students. At a quick glance, only Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Williams, and Middlebury provide need-blind admission to international students.
On its face, the argument seems pretty simple. As the college seeks to diversify its student body with international students, there is little to be gained for the college or the students by a policy that selects for wealthier applicants. This is especially true considering the low price-tag (at least in Dartmouth’s case, at $1.2 million) of the policy change.
Of course, it comes down to an issue of priorities. I think it’s a fair argument, but in my ironically (my parents immigrated on student visas) ethnocentric way, I think activist energy and college resources should be focused towards improving access to higher education, larger aid packages, and better recruiting among socioeconomic and racial groups that are disadvantaged in America. They aren’t mutually exclusive, but academic institutions are conservative (reluctant to change) by nature, and in the rare event of a dialogue leading to policy change, I think it is important to keep the larger picture in mind.
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We live in a global village and student in US competes the students with the rest of the world. That is a very hard fact and unavoidable reality. Unfortunately a family’s ability to afford the cost of US education in the top private school is very difficult even for the families considered wealthy in the third word countries. Fortunately US is still a powerful magnet for the students around the world.
The case is even stronger for the graduate and post-doc international student. The way top students need top schools, top schools need top students as well. It is not just an issue of “socioeconomic and racial groups that are disadvantaged in America”. This is also an issue of demand and supply. The way students are willing to pay extra premium for the top schools, it is normal for the top schools to provide a subsidy for the top students as well. When such super talented international students come to USA it is a windfall profit situation for US schools as well. Third world countries spent a fortune in subsidizing students in educating them. See the globally respected institutes in the third word countries, where admission ratio is less than 1/100,000 , where students pay less than $200 per semester but on a global scale they get the same pay scale as top business school in US ( e.g, Link ).
Agreed. It's great to provide oppurtunites for talented, intelligent foreign students to study here but it's hard to be proud when many American students are shafted. However, I think many international students are attractive to American Universities because (this may be a bit too generalized but) they tend to be more motivated and in areas like science and math, more qualified. So it also goes back to improving education in this country before college so that maybe more universities will be more willing to help more for American students.