Engineering Schools With the Most International Students
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The United States is a sought-after destination for international graduate students, particularly those pursuing degrees in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math).
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International students accounted for 57 percent of full-time enrollment in U.S. graduate engineering programs in fall 2012, up 3 percentage points from the previous year, according to data reported by 190 ranked institutions.
But the share of foreign students varies from school to school. At Michigan's Lawrence Technological University, for example, roughly 10 percent of the school's 78 full-time graduate engineering students hail from outside of the U.S.
[Find tips for international engineering applicants.]
At the opposite end of the spectrum is the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut, which enrolled 303 full-time graduate engineering students in fall 2012. Nearly 95 percent were international students.
Bridgeport's School of Engineering is an anomaly, even among engineering schools with high concentrations of foreign students, and tops the list of graduate engineering programs with the most international students. At these schools, foreign-born students accounted for roughly 86 percent of full-time enrollment in fall 2012.
[Learn why engineering grads have strong job prospects.]
Several of the schools that boast a large percentage of international students are designated as Rank Not Published (RNP) in the 2014 Best Engineering Schools rankings. U.S. News calculates a rank for all RNP institutions, but does not publish them. Graduate engineering programs with fewer than 20 full-time students were not considered for this report. Neither were schools designated as Unranked, which did not submit enough data for U.S. News to calculate a rank.
Below are the engineering schools with the highest percentage of full-time international students for fall 2012. Due to ties, there are 11 schools on this list.
Engineering school (name) (state) | Full-time enrollment (fall 2012) | Percentage of international students | U.S. News engineering school rank |
|---|---|---|---|
303 | 94.4 | RNP | |
123 | 88.6 | RNP | |
753 | 87 | 76 | |
1,059 | 86.9 | 72 | |
159 | 86.8 | RNP | |
1,350 | 86.1 | 76 | |
283 | 84.8 | 105 | |
2,034 | 83.9 | 57 | |
316 | 83.5 | RNP | |
1,232 | 83.4 | 61 | |
845 | 83.4 | 76 |
Don't see your school in the top 10? Access the U.S. News Engineering School Compass to find enrollment data, average GRE scores and much more.
U.S. News surveyed more than 190 schools for our 2012 survey of engineering programs. Schools self-reported a myriad of data regarding their academic programs and the makeup of their student body, among other areas, making U.S. News's data the most accurate and detailed collection of college facts and figures of its kind. While U.S. News uses much of this survey data to rank schools for our annual Best Engineering Schools rankings, the data can also be useful when examined on a smaller scale. U.S. News will now produce lists of data, separate from the overall rankings, meant to provide students and parents a means to find which schools excel, or have room to grow, in specific areas that are important to them. While the data come from the schools themselves, these lists are not related to, and have no influence over, U.S. News's rankings of Best Colleges or Best Graduate Schools. The enrollment data above are correct as of April 2, 2013.
