Fewer acceptances for International Students

[DeltaNeutral]

Hi everyone, I am an applicant from India and had applied for MS this year. A lot of people in similar boat/similar profile to me have been getting rejects. Only a rare few have been admitted/waitlisted. So is the situation very much different than previous years? Is this due to changing visa/H1B policies? Or is there a huge surge in local applicants from the US, as a lot of local applicants are getting admits. I have been observing that interviews/decisions for international students are released after US applicants (intl applicants from Europe and other places with less visa issues are not considered with us Indians I feel ) and they are mostly reject/waitlist at least for Indians. If it’s not the case then what are the aspects that I can improve in my profile?

My profile:
8.6/10 GPA in Bachelors from IIT Kanpur Maths and Computing, with 3 minors (industrial engg, cognitive science and theory of computing (CS)) quant strats intern at a BB. Working as an SDE at a US bank in India since 2 years. Passed CFA L1 in 2024. Candidate for CFA L2 this year.

 

[stewerlois]

Hasn't this been happening in previous years? I've noticed that Indians in general tend to be less in number in these programs (based on historical data), but can't conjecture anything as I've got too small a sample size.

But in any case, is this 'skew of selection criteria' for Indian students occurring just this year or has it been present throughout and may continue next year as well?

Also, are there any international students currently studying at any of these institutes sending out rejects who can comment on whether or not there's been an increased sentiment towards selecting US/European students in their cohort (or considering one's nationality during the application process in general)?

 

[Andy Nguyen]

@DeltaNeutral
I don't have enough data to see a noticeable trend.
The students from India and China make up the bulk of the applicants pool for the quant master programs. There is always a desire to admit qualified domestic students but I reckon there is not enough of them to alter the demographic makeup of all programs. They may converge to a few programs.
I just don't have enough data to see a noticeable trend.
I looked at your tracker and saw that you applied to some of the programs with very low acceptance rate. This may partly explain your reason for this question?
Perhaps if there is an optional nationality input box on the user profile or Tracker, this will give us finer insights to your answer.
Is that something you open to participate?

 

[YuminWu]

Perhaps if there is an optional nationality input box on the user profile or Tracker, this will give us finer insights to your answer.

I think this would be an interesting statistic to track.

On RedNote, I often see students from the U.S. or Canada receiving offers or interview invitations in the first batch or at the earliest time. Providing this information might better help future applicants understand the admission preferences of various programs and the timelines for domestic or international students.

 

[DeltaNeutral]

Hi @Andy Nguyen , yes definitely adding a country data point in the tracker is a good idea. I would like to agree with @YuminWu and add that from my observations, most universities invite locals or other countries with low visa issues (call them locals+) in the initial batches. I have been observing this with almost all the unis I applied to. It could be due to a bias on my end, but I know close to 10 applicants with similar/better profile than me from India. In the rare case that they were exceptional, they were given a waitlist. Of course, exceptions are always there. But in my observation some of the most excellent profiles which should receive multiple admits are scrapping their plan for Master’s this year due to 0 acceptances. Which has not usually been the case. Most of the locals+ were given results/interviews in the initial rounds. We were always given decisions/interviews in the later batches. As for the argument that why would the recent policies affect admission process, these programs put a lot of emphasis on their placement statistics. Hiring has been weak for the candidates who require visa sponsorship (at least in my limited network of seniors studying in these programs). Due to this, I believe that the universities are also slowly moving away from countries with visa issues, not to affect their stats too much.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

I think this would be an interesting statistic to track.

On RedNote, I often see students from the U.S. or Canada receiving offers or interview invitations in the first batch or at the earliest time. Providing this information might better help future applicants understand the admission preferences of various programs and the timelines for domestic or international students.

Hi @Andy Nguyen , yes definitely adding a country data point in the tracker is a good idea.

I have some implementation in place to help track nationality of applicants. This provides us all with insight on domestic vs international applicants.
The arguments above all have good merits. In a terrible job market, programs would want to prioritize applicants who do not need visa sponsorship lest it affects their placement. Rejecting high qualified international applicants in favor of domestic applicants is a short-term solution.
A top program will admit the top applicants because it can place them regardless of the market condition.