Dreaded Commute to the City Is Keeping Offices Mostly Empty

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

Are the majority of international undergradute students at Columbia Asian? That will be true at a place like Illinois, and also for graduate programs, but at Stanford (which has some of the best name recognition in East Asia...), I don't think the majority of the undergrad international population was Asian (My anectodal observation was that Europeans + Middle East international students were more common, though there were of course a fair number of Chinese, Korean, Indian and Singaporean students---oddly not that many Japanese...) This is partially because at least when I was there, there was no financial aid for international students.

Looking at top 10 nations is misleading, since there are a few large countries in Asia that will account for nearly all the Asian population, but the top 10 nations may not include the majority of international students.

I could probably find counts somewhere. I'm pretty sure, at Columbia at least, students from Asia comprise a large share of the international student body. I'd be pretty surprised if it weren't a solid majority.

Yeah, international students don't generally get any aid, which is why schools like them. But there are obviously lots of affluent households in Asia, so I'm not sure why that would be a barrier relative to Europe or Latin America.

Without looking it up, I assume Stanford's demographics are closer to the Ivies than to the elite publics. Probably also a large share of legacies and recruited athletes.

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I could probably find counts somewhere. I'm pretty sure, at Columbia at least, students from Asia comprise a large share of the international student body. I'd be pretty surprised if it weren't a solid majority.

Yeah, international students don't generally get any aid, which is why schools like them. But there are obviously lots of affluent households in Asia, so I'm not sure why that would be a barrier relative to Europe or Latin America.

Many European international students actually had full scholarships from their home countries, somehow (this seemed especially true for Scandinavians).

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I could probably find counts somewhere. I'm pretty sure, at Columbia at least, students from Asia comprise a large share of the international student body. I'd be pretty surprised if it weren't a solid majority.

Yeah, international students don't generally get any aid, which is why schools like them. But there are obviously lots of affluent households in Asia, so I'm not sure why that would be a barrier relative to Europe or Latin America.

Without looking it up, I assume Stanford's demographics are closer to the Ivies than to the elite publics. Probably also a large share of legacies and recruited athletes.

Well, it's possible Columbia internationals skew more Asian than Stanford, but that would be a bit surprising to me.

Here are the top 10 countries for Stanford international undergrads in 2020, but keep in mind that only about half of the international students are accounted for in this pie (the total was 673, apparently; this is an idiotic graphic that shows percentages of the students originating from the top ten percent, but it's dumb. Really only 90/673=13% of undergrad internationals are from China, a number that passes the smell test based on my experience). I suspect outside the top ten skews more European/Middle Eastern than Asian.



And yes, there are a lot of recruited athletes and legacies (actually the two are often the same... I mean, who plays squash or lacrosse outside of prep school kids?). But Stanford fields an FBS football team, so the demographics of Stanford athletes probably differ from Ivy League just because of that.

[craigs]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Without looking it up, I assume Stanford's demographics are closer to the Ivies than to the elite publics. Probably also a large share of legacies and recruited athletes.

From wikipedia, as of May 2, 2022:

Stanford:
White - 29%
Asian - 25%
Hispanic -17%
Foreign national - 11%
Other (multiracial and decline to state) - 10%
Black - 7%
Native American - 1%

UCLA:
Asian - 29%
White - 26%
Hispanic - 22%
Foreign national - 10%
Other (multiracial and decline to state) - 9%
Black - 3%