10 Business Schools With the Most International Students

10 Business Schools With the Most International Students

The United States is a sought-after destination for international students, whether they're coming for high school, college, or graduate school.

For graduate students, business school is a particularly popular option. International students accounted for 45 percent of applicants to full-time business programs at U.S. graduate schools in 2011, up 6 percent from 2010, according to the Graduate Management Admission Council. 

[Use these M.B.A. application tips for international students.] 

Coupled with an increase in student demand, some U.S. business schools enrolled high numbers of international students in 2011-2012. Among the 135 business schools that reported enrollment statistics to U.S. News, international students made up 28.3 percent of full-time students in M.B.A. programs, on average. 

International students were most strongly represented at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Lally School of Management and Technology, accounting for 70.6 percent of the New York school's full-time business school enrollees for fall 2011. The year before, international students made up 59 percent of the business school student body, the school reported. 

Northeastern states proved a popular destination for international students last fall. In addition to RPI, three other New York schools, the Hofstra University Frank G. Zarb School of Business, St. John's University's Peter J. Tobin College of Business, and the University of Rochester William E. Simon Graduate School of Business Administration, had among the highest percentages of international students in their full-time business programs, as did several business schools in Massachusetts. 

International students also flocked to several warmer-climate business schools, including Arizona's Thunderbird School of Global Management and the University of Californiaâ€"Riverside A. Gary Anderson Graduate School of Management. 

[Find out why school locations can surprise international students.] 

Several schools on the list below are designated as Rank Not Published (RNP). U.S. News calculates a numerical ranking for these schools but does not publish it. Schools designated as Unranked, because they do not submit enough data for U.S. News to calculate a numerical ranking, were not considered for this report.

(Some unranked schools, however, enroll many international students. At the Worcester Polytechnic Institute School of Business, for example, international students account for 84.7 percent of the full-time business school student body. At the California State Universityâ€"San Bernardino College of Business and Public Administration, 72.7 percent of full-time business students are international.) 

The 10 schools below enrolled the highest percentages of full-time students from countries abroad in fall 2011. 

U.S. News surveyed more than 400 schools for our 2011 survey of business programs. Schools self-reported a myriad of data regarding their academic programs and the makeup of their student body, among other areas, making U.S. News's data the most accurate and detailed collection of college facts and figures of its kind. While U.S. News uses much of this survey data to rank schools for our annual Best Business Schools rankings, the data can also be useful when examined on a smaller scale. U.S. News will now produce lists of data, separate from the overall rankings, meant to provide students and parents a means to find which schools excel, or have room to grow, in specific areas that are important to them. While the data come from the schools themselves, these lists are not related to, and have no influence over, U.S. News's rankings of Best Colleges or Best Graduate Schools.