Domestic vs. International Applicants

[specialk]

A fellow applicant for fall 2007 told me that the admissions process is different for domestic vs international applicants applying to doctoral programs in business, suggesting that it is more difficult for the latter to gain admission. Despite the short supply of PhD's in the U.S. I'm not sure whether an admissions committee would distinguish between the two types of applicants. For example, are international students expected to achieve higher marks or test scores, or to have distinguishing characteristics that are not required of American applicants? I don't know. I'm sure that to some extent it depends on the school and department, but does anyone have any thoughts on this in general, or with regard to their own specialties like Finance/Mkting/OB/etc?

[WallStGolfer31]

No school I have seen requires higher test scores from non-US citizens.

You might have been misinformed.

[specialk]

I would not expect any school to have an explicit requirement. That would be discriminatory. Rather, for example, perhaps international applicants have a more difficult time because of unfamiliarity with foreign undergraduate/MBA programs among admissions committees. Again, I'm just not sure. As an example, though, last year Duke admitted 20/125 domestic applicants compared to 14/333 international. According to their admissions website, these averages have been roughly the same for the past few years. This could be for any number of reasons, and there certainly is no basis for judging causation, but if there were no inherent differences among domestic and international applicants, one might expect a more positive correlation between applicants and admits.

Just a few thoughts, and I'd love to know what others think.

[CTG1983]

Yes, it is true that, int'l students are not favored as much as the domestic students. I have heard from a relative of mine who did his PhD from top-10.
The reason they show is that: for mba diversity is a big issue, but not so in case of PhD. And they don't want to spend money for foreigners. Spending money for domestic students is like a service to the nation.

But this was a purely personal opinion. The admissions statisctics of top schools for PhD suggests this, though. The (admission/no. of applications) is certainly greater for domestic students than for int'l students. Simply, it can't be claimed that int'l students are less smart or brilliant. In fact, they show higher commitment to research.

[CTG1983]

One reason this might be the case is that some of the funding sources specifically require that only domestic students be accepted. Another thing, many schools require their PhD-aspitants to do TA. Since int'l students may have a unitelligible accent, many college students don't like them as TA. So they may like to recruit domestic students.

[jbsears]

I believe the main reason is that a number of schools prefer to hire domestic professors. I went to a top 20 b-school for my bachelor and there were only a handful of foreign professors. The reason was that students don't want to take classes from professors that they can not understand.

For example, there were two professors for micro. One was from Taiwan and the other an American. People would put the class off a semester just to make sure they got the American professor. It was due to the difficulty understanding the accent and due to the different teaching style from the different cultures.

This is just my opinion from personal experience. I could be totally off. It wouldn't be the first time.

[bauble]

A couple of things I've heard (and don't shoot the messenger if it rubs the wrong way!):

- Domestics tend to fare better in the job market. It could be related to some of the reasons others have posted. I got this from credible source (a prof).

- Knowledge and trust issues, e.g., unfamiliar with the undergrad school or don't trust the test score (GMAT). My sense is that recs might be crucial for internationals.

[tkkoh]

I have heard that Int'l applicants tend to require higher GMAT than domestic applications to be competitive at the top schools. E.g. Domestic applicants can have their GMAT around the average or slightly below it. But Int'l applicants better have 750+ to be competitive. The is due to the general unfamiliarity with some of the universities overseas.

For other things like letter of recommendation, SOP and experience, I guess the high standards are demanded from all applicants regardless of their nationality.