Affordability was one of Yeomin Yun’s top priorities when it came time to decide where to attend college.
That’s not too unusual. A lot of college-bound students are worried about the price of education. Unlike most of them, however, Yun traveled more than 8,000 miles to attend her most affordable option, leaving her home in Chiang Mai, Thailand, to go to Grand Rapids, Michigan, and enroll at Calvin University.
Yun, a sophomore studying nursing, said Calvin had a reputation at her international high school for offering strong financial aid packages to international students.
“I applied to almost 20 schools and Calvin had the best one,” said Yun, who was born in Korea and grew up in Thailand. “The other biggest thing was Calvin’s international student body—Calvin showed a lot of interest, and I felt they cared a lot.”
Yun is one of nearly 500 international students who attend the private Christian university, contributing to Calvin’s robust enrollment numbers. Currently, Calvin students hail from 75 different counties across the globe, with the largest numbers coming from Korea, Canada, and Ghana, along with significant groups from China, Nigeria, India, Indonesia, and Guatemala.
This fall, 20 percent of students in the incoming class are from outside the United States. In comparison, roughly 23 percent of the student body at University of Michigan–Ann Arbor are international, or about 8,000 students. At Cornerstone University, an evangelical school college also located in Grand Rapids, roughly 8 percent of students are international. Nationally, about 6 percent of all students at American schools are from abroad.
As international interest in Calvin University has grown, school officials told CT these students have come to play an important role in the school’s enrollment strategy. They are also shaping Calvin’s student culture.
“We really value and love seeing that our student body gets to know classmates from all over the world,” said Lauren Jensen, the college’s vice president for enrollment strategy. “It just creates a rich learning environment, a rich opportunity for everybody.”
Calvin’s history of recruiting and accepting international students goes back more than 100 years. The college, which was founded in 1876, enrolled its first international students around 1900. The school is affiliated with the Christian Reformed Church in North America, which includes American and Canadian churches, so it has always had a good number of Canadian students. Historically, the college has also enrolled American citizens who have lived much of their lives abroad.
In recent years, Jensen said, the university has worked to recruit more international students from outside North America.
“We definitely have had international students for decades here at Calvin, but it is part of our growth strategy overall,” Jensen said. “We’ve been able to continue to lean into that and have more and more countries represented.”
Other colleges across the US are recruiting more international students as well, partly in response to declining enrollment and the domestic “demographic cliff.” During the 2023–24 school year, the total number of international students at US colleges reached an all-time high of more than 1.1 million students, according to an annual report from the Institute of International Education and the US Department of State.
International student enrollment has consistently increased over the last three years, according to the report, growing by another 3 percent this fall. International students contributed more than $50 billion to the US economy in 2023.
However, some higher education experts warn that the federal government’s visa and work programs for international students could change once Donald Trump becomes president. International applicants decreased during Trump’s first term, New England immigration attorney Dan Berger told CT, and several policies made it more challenging for international students from certain counties to get visas.
“Overall, colleges and universities are thinking ahead about uncertainty about what their international populations may look like and what the trends may be,” said Berger, a partner at Green and Spiegel immigration law firm and a fellow at Cornell Law School. “For current students, they’re mostly trying to reassure them that they will support them as they always have.”
The biggest question for current international students is travel. International travel got more complicated during Trump’s first term, Berger said, so many colleges are currently advising international students to return from break before Inauguration Day on January 20.
“We don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, so we don’t know exactly what can be done. But colleges can try to reassure them that they’re ready to support them and to evaluate any new policies and give them the best guidance they can,” he said.
At Calvin University, leadership echoed a similar approach.
“We are committed to working with our international students through any immigration changes, and we are committed to Calvin’s vibrant international student community,” Jensen said.
Amid the uncertainty, Calvin is still working to recruit and support international students. One way the college does this is through its international admissions and immigration team. The team, which is based in Michigan, travels across the world to directly recruit and work with students and their families.
“International families really appreciate that direct connection,” Jensen said.
Many international families say they are attracted to the college’s strong academic reputation, along with the Christian community it offers. However, Jensen said the college’s financial aid packages are often what set Calvin apart from other Christian colleges.
International students can apply for the college’s merit scholarships just like domestic students. But Calvin also offers need-based aid for international students, through institutional grants.
Once international students decide to enroll, the college offers several targeted resources, including support from the college’s immigration office, international peers, and its Center for Intercultural Student Development. In addition, before the school year starts, the college hosts an international student orientation, which includes help with things like setting up bank accounts, shopping for bedding and dorm room supplies, and navigating cultural transitions and academic expectations.
Jensen said international students and their families are also often drawn to the college’s onsite health services, campus housing options for all four years, and on-campus jobs that comply with visa regulations. On average, international students have a 90 percent retention rate each year—significantly higher than the average retention rate in the US and higher than the overall number at Calvin.
“Support and care once students are enrolled is so important,” she said. “That wraparound, holistic support is so important when you’re sending your son or daughter internationally. One of the things we hear the most is, ‘Wow, I feel so good leaving my son or daughter here. I can tell they’re going to be taken care of.’”
While international students contribute to enrollment growth at Calvin, there are other, more important reasons to recruit those students, according to Noah Toly, Calvin’s provost.
“We don’t see it as in tension with our other goals but tied in at the deepest level,” he said. “We get a much fuller perspective on what God is up to in the world and what the hope of the gospel means in our day-to-day lives when we are sharing learning experiences with people from Brazil, Ghana, Indonesia, and Korea.”
For international students, that cross-cultural experience is definitely part of the appeal. But it can also be quite challenging, according to Yun.
“It was definitely a culture shock at first,” she said. “But meeting and interacting with so many different people from different years, counties, and states has been so fun and rewarding.”
Over time, Yun grew more comfortable. One of her graduate residential directors was from Thailand too, which helped her feel more at home, and she made friends at her campus job in the dining hall. In November, one of her professors invited her to Thanksgiving dinner.
The highlight of Yun’s first year at Calvin was during the spring semester, when she attended Rangeela, an annual cultural show put on by Calvin’s international students. One of the students who helped found the tradition in 1996 was from India and gave the event the name, which means “colorful” in Hindi. The multiday event has sold out almost every year, evidence of the school’s appreciation for the diversity international students bring to the school.
For students who are very far from home, the event can serve as a welcome reminder of their place at Calvin.
“You can forget the fact that there are a lot of international students on campus, but that event showed the diversity that does exist,” Yun said. “It was relieving but also an amazing thing to witness.”
