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At Home Abroad
An increased effort to bring more students to Yale from overseas is proving that cultural diversity and cosmopolitanism come at a cost.
by Annie Murphy Paul
February 1997
“An excessively homogeneous class will not learn anywhere near as much from each other as a class whose backgrounds and interests and values have something new to contribute to the common experience.” So wrote President Kingman Brewster to his Director of Admissions in 1967. The result was an acceleration of the shift that was already taking place in Yale’s admissions policy. African Americans, Jews, and other underrepresented groups would soon be admitted to Yale College in large numbers for the first time. So would women. Three decades later, a movement is underway to welcome another group with different “backgrounds, interests, and values”: students from other countries.
Although there have been foreign students at Yale for as far back as anyone can remember—the graduate and professional schools have long been polyglot communities—the number of such students in Yale College has traditionally been low, and lower than at many peer institutions. Under President Levin, Yale is moving decisively to change that, by increasing its recruiting abroad and expanding its services to international students while they are on campus. The endeavor has already met with substantial success: Applications from international students have increased by 20 percent during the Levin administration, and their enrollment has more than doubled.
But the new initiative, like coeducation and the racial integration of the student body, has not been without its dilemmas. The hundreds of international students now passing through Yale College are putting new and greater demands on its resources, seeking help with problems ranging from obtaining visas to writing footnotes to communicating with roommates. Meanwhile, the College’s financial aid policy for internationals has created some perplexing problems, ones that may actually hinder the selection of a heterogeneous student body. Most important, the presence of many more international students, from many more far-flung lands, has posed questions about Yale’s institutional character and purpose, questions it is only now beginning to address.
It’s not hard to see why Yale has encouraged the arrival of international students. They represent a new pool of prospective students, often the most outstanding in their countries, on which Yale can draw to assemble its freshman classes. Many such students are exceptionally well-read and well-educated. And in admitting students from less-developed countries, Yale has an opportunity to shape the futures of countries all over the globe.
But competition for the most desirable international students is intense. Other universities—Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Pennsylvania prominent among them—have mounted aggressive and wide-ranging overseas recruiting campaigns. Compounding such competition is Yale’s relatively slow start. The number of international students coming to the United States began to rise in the 1970s; the end of the Cold War accelerated the trend. By 1993, 449,750 international students were enrolled in American universities; in that year, however, only 3.4 percent of Yale’s freshman class was international (excluding Canadians, who are in many ways treated like U.S. citizens by the admissions office).
Although President Levin has openly endorsed internationalization, his predecessors were not so enthusiastic. “Past presidents of Yale have been quite isolationist,” says Cyrus Hamlin, professor of German and acting chair of the Standing Committee on International Education. “They felt that Yale was a privileged place, and that students from elsewhere were not suitable or qualified to study here.” Adds Hamlin, “That attitude is gone for good.”
But even with the full support of the administration, Yale’s efforts at broadening its reach have encountered a few complications. In some ways, Yale College simply does not fit the needs of the typical international student. To meet the demand for specific skills in their native countries, many foreign students wish to study chemistry, mathematics, or engineering—fields in which Yale is not as strong as it has traditionally been in the humanities. Some international students are not familiar with the idea of a liberal education: In their own countries, students specialize early, and have chosen an occupation by the time they enter high school. And many do not want an undergraduate education here at all; an American graduate degree is considered more valuable.
But many potential candidates may simply be uninformed about Yale and its strengths. Compared to some of its peer institutions, Yale has had a low profile overseas. That’s so at least in part because the College until recently did no orchestrated international recruiting; admissions officers began making trips abroad only in 1991. The international prominence of other schools created a self-perpetuating cycle from which Yale was effectively excluded: International students applied to an American university because it was well known; those students then returned to their native countries, and spread their universities' reputations even further. Sana Haroon '98, a native of Pakistan who is president of the Yale International Students Organization, transferred from Wellesley College as a sophomore. “I actually didn’t even think of applying to Yale as a senior in high school, simply because I knew little about it and had met few Yale graduates to tell me about it,” she says.
What international students do know about Yale—especially its location—may not be entirely favorable. While the University has been largely successful among American students in countering New Haven’s image as a dangerous city, associate director of admissions Diana Cooke notes that “the farther you get from here, the longer the stories persist.” The city’s reputation is aggravated by many internationals' perception of the United States as a violent, crime-ridden place. Says Frederico Gil Sander, a junior: “My teachers in Brazil told me that New Haven was a dump. Then I got here and saw that it was a very nice town.”
But perhaps the greatest limitation on the College’s population of international students is imposed by its own financial aid policy. Admission for international students is not need-blind, as it is for U.S. citizens and Canadians. Those internationals who do not apply for aid are considered along with the rest of Yale’s applicants, and have the same chance of getting in—20 percent—as Americans. The applications of foreign students who do request funding, however, are evaluated separately, and their rate of admission is a tiny 2 percent. Although many more are qualified, that is as far as Yale’s international student-aid budget, about $290,000 per class, will stretch. That allocation has stayed constant even as the number of international applications to Yale has swelled.
Competition for aid among international students is so fierce that some forgo any chance at funding, even though they need it. “I was going to apply for financial aid from Yale, and then I read the fine print that said it would really hinder my chances of getting in,” says Mya Win, a sophomore from the Philippines. “I talked it over with my dad, and he said I shouldn’t apply for aid, even though it puts a big strain on my family financially.” Since international students are not eligible for federal aid or loans, and since undergraduates are rarely funded by foreign governments, applicants from poor families have no choice but to try for a full scholarship to Yale, and accept the odds against them.
Despite such difficulties, Yale remains extraordinarily attractive to many international students. Some come because they want an international perspective on their studies; others because the schools in their own countries are inadequate. But most choose Yale for the same reasons that American students do. “I decided that Yale was the place for me because there’s more of an emphasis on undergraduate education here than at other universities,” says Henrik Toggenburger, a junior from Switzerland. Sana Haroon says that what led her to transfer to Yale was “above all other things, the intense involvement of students in activities on campus—both academic and extracurricular.” And Frederico Gil Sander says that he was drawn to Yale because of its tradition of liberal education. “In Brazil, you go right from high school to professional school,” he says. “I wanted to have more options, and that’s why Yale was appealing to me.”
To reach such people, the College has been dedicating more time and resources to attracting foreign students. The admissions office now has four staff members who read the applications of internationals; two of the staffers also recruit abroad and together spend a total of six weeks out of the country. For the first time last year, international students already at Yale participated in a phone-a-thon, calling admitted students from their home countries and encouraging them to accept Yale’s offer.
Such activities have paid off: The proportion of international students in this year’s freshman class is almost 7 percent.
But because international students have only recently reached a critical mass, the College has been slow to develop resources for them once they are here. Not long ago, Yale offered nothing beyond the services of the Office of Foreign Students and Scholars, which deals exclusively with immigration matters; a cookies-and-juice reception was the internationals' only formal introduction to Yale. In response to the growing presence of international students on campus, however, a University-wide committee was convened in 1991 to review their status and make recommendations. One such suggestion was to create an Office of International Education, which opened a year ago under the supervision of Undergraduate Career Services director Susan Hauser. The office assists students on an as-needed basis, dispensing information, guidance, and money from a small emergency fund. It also administers a three-day international student orientation, another of the report’s recommendations.
Despite such efforts, the needs of international students are still so great as to strain the resources Yale has allotted them. Until recently, international students at Yale were almost invariably from Western Europe (or occasionally from Hong Kong), spoke excellent English, and were familiar with Western and even American culture; their families were almost always affluent. Yale’s admissions office has made a deliberate attempt to diversity this group, but the success of its efforts has created some unforeseen complications. During winter break, for example, all Yale undergraduates must vacate the residential colleges for three weeks. International students, like most American students, have traditionally gone home for the holiday. But students from poor families usually can’t afford the trip, and often have no other place to go. Yale has had to help find local “host families” to take them in. (Starting this spring, a fund set up by an anonymous donor and administered by the Office of International Education will buy needy students one round-trip ticket home.)
Language can also be a stumbling block for this new international population, even though Yale requires the TOEFL, or Test of English as a Foreign Language, as a condition of admission. Most international students speak fluent English, but the skills of others are not always equal to the demands of academic writing and discussion. Betsy Sledge, a writing tutor in Silliman College, suggests that classes in English-as-a-second-language should be made more available to internationals. “If Yale is going to accept these students, it has to be aware that they have special needs, and be ready to serve them,” says Sledge. “Handing them a pamphlet on writing prose is not going to do it.”
Even the most basic elements of American education may be unfamiliar to some international students. Louis Nkrumah, a freshman from Ghana, has not only had to learn to use a computer, but even how to type on a keyboard; all of his papers in Ghana were written by hand. For other students, the very notion of choosing one’s classes is baffling. “I had a fixed program in high school,” says Henrik Toggenberger. “I never had a choice of what classes to take. When I saw the size of the course catalog I was overwhelmed.”
Students from conservative cultures may have a particularly difficult adjustment to Yale’s relaxed atmosphere. Those from countries where mixing of the genders is discouraged, for example, may now find themselves sharing a bathroom with members of the opposite sex. And even when emotionally troubled, such students may not feel comfortable seeking assistance. According to Alexandros Zervos, “international students are less likely to go for personal help. They are less apt to tell other people what they feel. Instead they think, ‘I’ll deal with it myself.’” Homesickness, common enough among American students, is exacerbated by the utter newness of everything: Rinendra Shakya '99 of Nepal remembers that, as a freshman, he couldn’t get used to American food.
Financial problems loom large for many international students. Although many are from wealthy or well-to-do families, those on aid face special frustrations. “Students coming with no financial means have needs beyond the usual limits,” notes Cyrus Hamlin. “They have very little clothing, and no books.” As part of his financial aid package, Louis Nkrumah’s family was asked to contribute $500, far less than the usual family contribution for an American student on financial aid. In Ghana, however, $500 is more than half of the average annual income. The requirement was waived, but Nkrumah still had to take out a loan to pay for books and clothes. His pillows, bedspread, and winter coat were given to him by the University. “It’s my opinion that Yale should not accept students who cannot provide some financial support of their own,” says Hamlin. “It’s not fair to force them to be so dependent on us.”
It is only by admitting students like Nkrumah, however, that admissions officers can ensure that more than a handful of countries—in Western Europe, East Asia, and the Saudi Peninsula—are represented at Yale. Limitations on financial aid already skew the student body toward the affluent. “We'd like to admit more students from Eastern Europe, from Africa, from South America, but people from those countries almost invariably need full financial aid,” says Diana Cooke. “Yale just can’t fund them all.” Admissions officers thus face a vexing paradox: As their recruiting efforts become more successful, they will have to turn away more and more qualified international students because they can’t pay their way.
Despite the dilemmas posed by the increasing presence of international students in Yale College, there is little doubt that they are an invaluable asset to the University. In a seminar on World War I taught this year by history professor Gaddis Smith, four of 12 students are internationals—from Iran, Germany, Great Britain, and the Philippines. “The perspective they provide is extraordinary,” says Smith. “They have read far more, and they have a greater sense of the world. It’s a better education for everybody.”
Because such situations are still so novel, however, no one can be sure how the growing presence of international students will affect Yale College’s curriculum, admissions policy, or institutional culture. Smith notes that some have wondered whether Yale will cease to be a national university at all, and whether space for students from the U.S. will shrink as a result. “I think that Yale will remain predominantly a college for American students,” he says. “But alumni do worry whether it will be harder for their children to get in.”
Of course, one day those alumni may themselves be former international students. That may well be the most radical change of all achieved by internationals: shedding what one foreign student calls their “common otherness” and becoming, simply, Yalies. “People from all over the world are coming here now to be a part of Yale,” says Henrik Toggenburger. “We’re creating an international tradition.”  |
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