For the second year in a row, I had the pleasure of traveling to India as part of our partnership with Next Genius. It's never easy to leave home for two weeks, especially if it requires a 14-hour flight, but it's always worth it. Recruiting internationally is not for the faint of heart -- it requires late-night flights, long car rides over bumpy roads, and new foods. But the reward of meeting students is worth it.
With 1.4 billion people, India is the largest exporter of students for higher education in the world. Any college that wants an international population must recruit in India. The 12 days I spent there, meeting students and speaking with counselors about the benefits of a liberal arts education and Oberlin, were a time well spent.
India stimulates the senses in ways that are spectacular and challenging. From flamingo-pink saris to deep violet eggplants to bright yellow lentils on one hand, to congested concrete jungles on the other. From the smells of delicious curries to nimbu pani (a lemon water drink with salt added, resulting in a sulfuric, rotten egg smell). All of your senses are awakened and alert to new sights, smells, and sounds.
To ensure that our blogs are helpful for our entire prospective student audience, here are some common questions that we hear from our international students.
What is your university about? This is a tough question to answer -- do you focus on liberal arts or our musical and artistic opportunities? I start with Oberlin as a liberal arts school and then have to make sure people understand that means we don't only offer arts. Liberal arts education is not well-known overseas, so I spend lots of time talking about the breadth and depth of the curriculum offered at Oberlin. Students receive a well-rounded education with access to more than 1200 courses offered each year.
Can I take the national curriculum? Do you need Board results? There are so many different curricula that students overseas can pursue. There are national curricula, the IB program, the Cambridge program, just to name a few. It doesn't really matter to us which ones students pursue. We just want to see students doing well. And if they pursue a national curriculum, we do want to see the results of the required national exams.
Do you have business/economics/finance? Many international students are interested in pre-professional areas of study, so more liberal arts colleges are expanding their areas of study to include things like business and finance. What we have to make sure the students understand is that they'll study these areas as part of the liberal arts, not to the exclusion of other subjects.
Do I have to take math to study economics? This is a tricky question. What the students typically mean is: do I have to study math in high school if I want to study economics in college? The short answer is no. But it depends on the curriculum. If students are in the Cambridge program, studying three things in depth, math does not need to be one of them. But if a student is pursuing an IB degree, math will be a part of the course of study.
Do I need to submit English language proficiency results? It depends on two things: 1) what is your native language?; and 2) what is the language of instrutction in your high school? If the answer to either of these is "English," then you don't need to take the TOEFL, DET, or IELTS exam.
Do you have full tuition scholarships? No. Kinda. Both. Honestly, it depends on the family. Oberlin meets 100% of every family's demonstrated need. If a student's family can only afford the cost of housing and dining (or less), then their aid package would cover tuition. But we do not grant full tuition scholarships to a student based on their academics.
Do you have fee waivers for the application or CSS Profile or language proficiency exams? Oberlin does not charge students to submit an application. For the CSS Profile or language proficiency exams, we do not have fee waivers. Students are welcome to submit the ISAFA instead of the CSS Profile. For language proficiency exams, if you get a waiver from another school, you're welcome to submit the scores to us with that waiver.
As an international student, we know that it's challenging to really get to know us well. Register for one of our international student Q&A sessions or sign up to get our on-demand information session. And if you have any questions, please email us at international.admissions@oberlin.edu.
