Comparing International Cohort with Domestic

[Humanomics]

I've always thought it was ridiculous to compare the international applicants with domestic applicants. Internationals almost always have MA work, because their undergraduate degrees are structured with less years, and because they have to fight harder to get here. And it seems incoming cohorts are about always half internationals at top 30's. I find it really hard to believe that is because qualifications are distributed such that the population of applicants is just about split between international applicants and domestics.

I would venture that there are many more international applications than domestic, and that thus the prerequisite price of admission is higher. Regardless, I really doubt adcoms are holding international applicants up next to domestic applicants, considering them for the same slot in the cohort.

Agree? Disagree?

[tm_member]

This has been discussed many times and I can speak from insider knowledge that applicants get reviewed by someone familiar with the part of the world they are from. That is, we have two professors who review Asian applicants. Another who examines European, another for South American and then regular adcom members examine the North American applicants.

There are a hugely disproportionate number of applications from International students, however most of them are "bogus", as in they have some aspect of them that indicates they are not at all suited to grad school in the US, and that perhaps they are just seeking a US visa. (I have been told this directly from a past DGS at Pitt). Once these are removed, there are more realistic domestic applicants than internationals.

The cream of the crop from each international region gets forwarded to the main adcom with an explanation of how such a student compares to a US student. While internationals may have more credentials, American students tend to catch up quickly and often surpass the internationals - on the job market specifically. So credential differences matter less than you think. Adcoms want to admit students who will proceed through the program at the correct pace, and then land a good academic job. American students will often start slower but are better at writing papers and presenting their work, are more popular as RAs (from my experience) and do better on the all-important US job market.

Saying that there is some quota of positions is not really accurate, it's just in any group of 500 applicants, the shakedown will look similar as the applicant pool is on average very similar each year.

* Note, I am not American.

[OneArmedEcon]

Most Top 30-50ish programs tend to be split ~50/50 between domestic and international students. Whether that's a result of an actual quota or just a natural result from the composition of competitive applicants (as tm_guru suggests) or some other factor really doesn't matter. I suspect that part of it is that many competitive international students will have secured financial support from their home country, which gives them a significant advantage when it comes to admissions at public universities.

[kipfilet]

In my year, cohorts in most of the top10 are extremely biased towards internationals - the average percentage of US students is around 20%-30% I would say (there are only 2 in my class for example).

[Catrina]

Kipfilet,

Why do you think that is?

[Walras]

Hey as someone headed to a UC school I'd just like to mention my cohort is more American than I expected (I got a list from the secretary and its significantly over 50%). I think also affecting it may be that they expect me to change my residence to CA my 2nd year on, so they only need in state tuition waivers from then on.