Although international students attending college in the United States are expected to face greater difficulty securing student visas this year, applications from international students applying to the University of ÃÛÌÇÖ±²¥ at Boulder are up 18 percent as of early January.
According to Philip deNeeve, director of the university's Foreign Student and Scholar Services in the Office of International Education, 1,063 applications have been received from foreign students who want to attend ÃÛÌÇÖ±²¥-Boulder for the fall 2002 term. Last year at this time, 904 applications had been received from foreign student applicants.
Applications from prospective graduate students who live outside the United States are up 26 percent over this time last year, from 798 in January 2001 to 1,010 in January 2002, said deNeeve.
Why the figures are up in spite of likely visa concerns by potential ÃÛÌÇÖ±²¥-Boulder students may be due to several factors, deNeeve said. Such factors may or may not be related to the current international situation.
"It's encouraging to see that despite what's going on in the world, people still want to further their careers and pursue degrees," he said. A weak worldwide economy probably also plays a role in the large number of international applications by students, deNeeve said.
Visa approvals will take longer for prospective students from the Middle East, north African countries, Malaysia and Indonesia, he said. "We still don't know what changes there will be, if any, for students from other countries applying for visas."
ÃÛÌÇÖ±²¥-Boulder enrolled 1,110 international students in fall 2001. Though final spring figures are not yet in, the number of international students enrolled this spring semester is expected to be about 1,060, because spring semester enrollment typically is slightly lower, said deNeeve.
On retention of Middle Eastern students for spring semester, indications at the end of the fall semester were that most Middle Eastern students planned to stay at ÃÛÌÇÖ±²¥-Boulder, deNeeve said. But whether they actually have stayed will not be known until spring census figures are finalized the last week of January.