Notre Dame currently has fourteen international students, with three of them having arrived this year. Emily Wang from China, who is in the Class of 2030, Sophie Eder, a freshman from Austria, and me, from Belgium. Last year, the school welcomed six international students. It seems as if this number has been fluctuating for a while.
Since 2020, the number of international students has been decreasing. Back then, COVID was the cause. Now, the difficulties that students come across when trying to get a visa for the United States might make them reconsider. Some students even change their destination to Australia or the United Kingdom.
Despite these challenges, the newest international students say their experience at NDB has been positive. Each of them found the school in different ways. Eder discovered NDB online while searching for a school near her brother. Wang heard about NDB through a family friend who had attended. I also found out about NDB through the internet.
“I agreed on going to Notre Dame because I knew that they had really strong sports here, and the education is good,” shares Eder, explaining why she chose Notre Dame.
This brings up questions about how exactly NDB advertises the program. Reana Mullan, International Counselor and Program Director, goes to international school fairs all around the world and presents NDB. This is a good strategy to advertise the school, it reaches people that are interested. Although in the interviews people don’t express this as their main reason for coming here.
The cost of attending as an international student is also a major factor. An international student pays around $43,000 in tuition and $20,000 for housing. This might result in students deciding not to come here for longer than a year, because they can’t afford to. When asking the students about this they all get a knowing look on their face and shake their heads agreeing that it’s very expensive.
“It’s a lot of money. It’s only for this year, because I think my parents, maybe they could afford it, but they wouldn’t like to have me in school for another year” Eder explains.
The experience at Notre Dame’s brother school, Junipero Serra High School, is somewhat similar. John Bong, a junior who arrived last year, learned about Serra through his aunt. For him, the hardest part of coming to the U.S. was the language barrier. He spent a year and a half studying English before finally receiving his visa.
The visa application process also affects the number of international students. Last year, in May President Donald Trump decided to close all visa application appointments. You could only get your Visa if you had booked an appointment before that time. I remember that at first my Visa Application got denied, because the Trump administration decided that all social media needed to be checked before your Visa could be accepted. This elongated the process by a few weeks. Beforehand, you fill out an incredibly long application with questions about things such as criminal activity, and the only thing they focused on during my interview was what I had posted on my Instagram. How is this going to affect freedom of speech? People should be able to post what they want on their social media.
“I think just getting the visa interviews, embassy interviews, I guess scheduling that because there was a time when they were actually the embassies were closed and they weren’t accepting any new applicants. Thankfully, new students that I currently had were already in process, (they) already had scheduled their interviews, and so that didn’t affect them. But for any new applicants, that definitely hindered the process.” Mullan shares about the struggles of getting a Visa application interview.
Being an international student in the US right now is hard. It takes a lot of hard work to get here, such as applying for the Visa, learning the language and paying the tuition. These struggles have made the number of students decrease. But even with all these struggles, there are still people who want to come. During the interviews the students have given nothing but positive feedback. NDB is a very welcoming school, and everyone involved is doing their best to keep it that way.
