How many internationals apply to English PhD programs?

[Catria]

I expect it to be different from STEM (Vanderbilt once said that 2/3-3/4 of its applicant pool for the physics PhD was made up of internationals, with 1/2+ of the total applicant pool that came from either China or India, the data is a little dated though), but one has to wonder how many internationals apply to English programs.

 

Take Northwestern for example. Since NWU is a private school, top-20 even, one would expect Northwestern not to favor US residents over equally-qualified internationals on the basis of residency status, and to be rather highly sought-after by internationals. Yet NWU enrolls either 0 or 1 international a year. Either NWU is highly protectionistic for a private school, international applicants are weaker on average vs. domestic applicants, or international applicants are just not that common to begin with.

 

http://www.tgs.northwestern.edu/documents/program-statistics/E25PH_adm_enr.pdf

[NotSpyderman]

I have no idea how many do, and I don't know many (any?) who have applied apart from me, but I took bets all over the country and applied for PhD programs in English (or lit or media studies).

Bonus points for weirdness: I come with just one degree- in STEM.

[Catria]

Or has English a more limited power to attract international applicants for some reason?

[1Q84]

Not sure why you were downvoted but I have no idea as to the relative draw or not of English programs for international students (saying this as an international student myself).

The only thing I can imagine is that an English doctorate is much less transferable/useful for overseas students than one in the sciences, let's say, which might explain why those programs are jampacked with internationals.

Edited February 22, 2015 by 1Q84

[ExponentialDecay]

Two common fallacies: thinking that a phenomenon is explained exclusively or predominantly by one variable, and deriving conclusions from a sample of 1.

 

All of the reasons you mention and many more factor into why you don't see as many international students pursuing English degrees. By the way, if you open up your search to Comp Lit or foreign language degrees, the proportion of internationals will increase. Note also that humanities programs tend to be much smaller than science programs: that 17% international statistic may reflect 1 foreign student in 5, or 17 foreign students in 100. Admission in the humanities also works differently from admission in the sciences; sadly, things like prestige, cultural capital, social and research conventions matter a lot more in the humanities, and most international students don't excel in those attributes.

[tellyn]

One of the big factors contributing to the smaller number of internationals in English PhD programs within the U.S., I would tentatively assume, is the fact that, in the wide World, there exists a gap between "native or near-native speakers of English" and "non-native speakers of English (or non-speakers)", and the former group forms a far larger percentage of the U.S. population than of the non-U.S. international population (in which non-U.S. but English-speaking countries are a minority). And members of the former group, of course, are more inclined to be interested in making a living out of, and also to excel at, English as a discipline (which differs innately from other fields in which the use of English would be just a tool in the education process.) So I'd say international students applying for English PhDs are both less common in the first place and indeed "weaker" on average, hence a bigger domestic applicant pool and more domestic acceptances. Forgive me if I sometimes state the obvious; this was me trying to take your question as seriously as possible.

Edited February 28, 2015 by tellyn

[Catria]

Ok, I acknowledge that I may have erred, but this is the only school for which I readily found demographic data detailed enough about admissions to actually suggest anything. I wonder whether NWU is that different from other peer schools (Rutgers, Brown, etc.) in some respects vis-à-vis international applicants to English programs...

[ExponentialDecay]

Why are you asking? You're applying for Physics, and not to NWU. 

[tellyn]

To add an extra two cents, in my English student community here (East Asia), NWU is especially notorious for its reluctance to accept international students to their English PhD program, along with a few other "conservative" or "protectionistic" schools. Students from my country have been enthusiastically accepted to similarly ranked institutions (or higher), but somehow no one seems to be making it to NWU, Boston College, etc. in the past decade or so--and of course now, due to the low success rate, fewer students take the shot in the first place. All in all, I do not think that data from NWU can be treated as a reflection of the general case.

Edited March 2, 2015 by tellyn