The relative collegiate experiences and outcomes of international students in the USA

As of the 2012–2013 academic year, approximately 820,000 college students in the USA (or approximately 4% of the student pool) were international students. This number is up 7.2% from the previous year and has been experiencing an upward trend since 2005. Thus, an understanding of how these students' collegiate experiences and outcomes differ from domestic students is of increasing importance for both educators and education policy makers. Using longitudinal data on undergraduates from more than 450 US colleges and universities, we study these differences by implementing propensity score matching to create an ideal comparison group of domestic students. Students are matched on 30 important pre–college characteristics. Among our results, international students are shown to study more, feel less overwhelmed by their academic responsibilities, earn similar grades, and more often increase their financial aspirations when compared to domestic students. Overall, we find limited, but important, differences across domestic status in experiences and outcomes, and expose several stereotypes regarding international students.