ASU is adding yet another title to its ranks with international students leaving their home and coming to the desert to study.
The 2015 Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange announced Monday that ASU is ranked fourth for enrollment of international students.
This title comes only shortly after ASU was named the Most Innovative National University by U.S. News, ranking above schools like Stanford and Harvard University.
Yet Ugandan international student and chemical engineering sophomore Limon Bogere said this title isn’t necessarily a reflection of the actual institution, but rather the group of people who make up the University.
“It’s because they’ve got so many and such a variety of international students,” Bogere said. “They can form clubs and communities for different cultures and allow students to succeed while embracing their own culture as well as others.”
Bogere came to ASU in fall of 2014 and said he’s seen the deep diversity in the school and the level of acceptance they’re granted.
Of the top 25 schools on the list that were hosting international students, ASU showed the largest increase percentage wise in its international student community.
In the 2014-15 academic year, ASU hosted over 11,330 students, showing a growth of more than 30 percent in a year. That 11,330 was out of almost 975,000 international students that studied in U.S. universities.
International students join a diverse ASU community and through their participation contribute to all students’ understanding of an increasingly interconnected world, ASU Interim Provost Mark Searle said in a statement.
In the past five years alone, the population has more than doubled. In 2010 there were a reported 5,000 international students enrolled.
Linguistics sophomore Grace Gnewuch said this is only a start.
Gnewuch, an Arizona resident, is one of the many students that’s taken advantage of the variety of students here and has delved into different cultures. Gnewuch has classes in both Spanish and Korean and taking on a Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages certificate, which she hopes to use in translating after college.
“I think because there’s so many communities building here, it’s going to in turn attract more communities and more international students to the programs,” Gnewuch said.
Gnewuch also said that this diversity will also give a unique highlight to many student’s average college experience.
“It’s important, I think, to embrace the things that separate us from any other college in America,” Gnewuch said.
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Reach the reporter at megan.janetsky@asu.edu or follow @meganjanetsky on Twitter.
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