By Katie Farkas
The pandemic not only had an effect on the domestic student population at Adelphi’s campus, but also created a lot of challenges for international students.
“Last year was a difficult year for everyone, but many international students were not able to travel to be on campus, so there was some deferred demand for college admission,” said Tracy Nilsen, director of Admissions Operations & Systems.
The situation is looking promising for a good semester and 2021-‘22 academic year. Nilsen said this fall semester there are 154 new international students in which 60 are new first year students, 15 are new transfer students and 79 are new graduate students.
“International students are very excited to return for this fall, to take classes in person and to participate more fully in university life,” said Christopher Storm, provost and executive vice president.
Many students are much more confident about traveling and living on campus this year.
“There are still obstacles for those potentially coming from parts of the world where the pandemic continues to be a major issue—really, most of the world,” Nilsen said. “At this point, we have 20 countries represented in the incoming class, the largest numbers coming from Pakistan, India, China, Bangladesh and the Republic of Korea.”
There were 484 international students in fall 2020 and only 31 of them were living on campus and 25 out of the 31 students returned this fall semester. Four out of the six students who didn't return graduated from Adelphi, Nilsen said.
“In the semesters after spring 2020, we saw many of our international students return to their countries and continue their studies online,” said Storm. “Closures of consulates and embassies made it very difficult for students to obtain visas to come to the US for the last academic year so we did see a drop in international students on campus.”
But Storm said they kept in touch through International Services’ Global Chats in the spring 2020 and weekly that summer. He added that some students participated in the Virtual Host Family program, where a faculty member welcomed an international student into his or her home over Zoom for informal chats.
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