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An insider’s guide to international graduate admissions: A European view
With the growing demand for higher education in some world regions and increased marketing activities by destination countries, the volume of applications from international students has been steadily increasing over the past decade in many countries.
The number of applications has reached a critical dimension in many countries and many international offices originally designed to manage exchange programmes – or admissions offices designed for national admissions – are overburdened. In addition, applicants come from an increasingly diverse range of countries, making it more difficult to assess and compare their entry qualifications and thus to make an informed selection. On the other hand, the competition for the very best students at the global scale and the need to internationalise universities have contributed, too, to making international admissions policies and practice a major concern amongst both higher education institutions and the students that apply to them.
| ‘In short, admission of international students is often seen as both necessary and desirable.’ |
Regardless of this, little research has been devoted to how international admissions are handled in different countries and institutions and the importance of adequate admissions and selection procedures for international students has widely been neglected. In 2003-2004 the Academic Cooperation Association (ACA) carried out a study which aimed at filling the information gap by looking into admission models at universities in Australia, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden and the USA. The results were published in September 2004 in the series ACA papers on international cooperation in education, and form the basis of this article.
THE RATIONALE
Why do universities admit international students? The reasons can be varied, and even within a single institution several considerations play a role. These range from commitment to development policy to financial considerations (foreign students bring income to the university); from the building of an international profile to demand-driven recruitment (international students apply, whether you like it or not), to the need to compensate for a lack of demand at the national level, especially for technology-related programmes. In short, admission of international students is often seen as both necessary and desirable.
 | ‘Especially for postgraduate students, direct contact with the academic staff is retained as very important and it is often crucial for an enquiry to turn into an application.’ ‘Language command is an obvious issue in foreign admissions and proof of sufficient knowledge of the teaching language (which is not always the official language of the country) is usually requested as part of the application.’ |
When addressing the issue of international admissions the universities have to consider two basic questions:
- How to organise practically the selection within the institution
- How to choose the “right” students
In other words, the admissions and selection processes have to be designed both to be efficient and purposeful, as well as to help pick up the kind of students the university wants. Most universities want simply the best students: especially at the postgraduate level. The selection is often based on previous academic performance and focuses on the selection of the best from among all eligible candidates. For other programmes, the selection is rather based on the assessed potential of the student to succeed in the programme. An additional consideration in the admission process is, for example, the balanced composition of the classroom: the desire to internationalise has to be matched with needs of the local community and with a good variety of nationalities. The balance and relative importance of all these factors influence the “who” and “how” of the selection procedure.
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