Elise Rust

Investment in an undergraduate degree typically provides access to higher-paying jobs, strong alumni networks, and greater financial success. In a 2018 survey by UCLA’s Cooperative Institutional Research Program, 85.1% of college freshmen said that “being able to get a better job” was one of their main reasons to attend college. The big question then is: which schools do employers look to when hiring? Times Higher Education found that recruiters’ favorite US institutions included the usual suspects like Harvard and Stanford, as well as perhaps more surprising candidates such as New York University and much cheaper state schools like the University of California Berkeley. These schools all excel at providing an education that hones employable skills like the ability to effectively communicate orally or analytically think through problems. For students interested in studying abroad, many international institutions, such as Cambridge, Technical University at Munich, and the University of Tokyo all rank as highly as MIT, Stanford, and Princeton.

Top universities in the U.S. for graduate employability 2019 (US Rank / Intl Rank = Dark)

Many U.S. students select colleges with a high enrollment of international students in the hopes of experiencing global cultures and viewpoints. On top of cultural contributions, international students accounted for over 1 million of America’s higher education students and spent $41 billion in the US economy in 2018-2019. In the last weeks, the United States government has passed aggressive policies threatening to refuse visas and even deport international students in a move that will likely discourage international students from studying here now and in future years. To understand the contribution of international students to individual college campuses, we’ve included our graph below. The institutions that will be most impacted are large research universities like NYU, USC, and Northeastern, while small liberal arts colleges Smith, Wesleyan, Bryn Mawr, and Macalester will also be affected. It is possible that this decline in international applicants will increase the 2021 admission rate inside the country as colleges struggle to meet enrollment needs during the pandemic and given its economic impact.  

Colleges with the Highest Proportion of International Students 2018-2019