Temple University has received its largest number of applicants ever — and saw a 36% increase in international student applications.
Temple received over 38,000 applications — marking a 5% increase in applications — over the last year, according to the university. The increase in international applicants at Temple is part of a trend found across other local universities, including West Chester, Pennsylvania State University, and Drexel, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
The Institute of International Education found that 43% of colleges reported an increase in international student applications for the 2021-22 academic year last June, a pattern shown by several colleges in the Philadelphia area.
At Penn State, international applicants rose by 17%, at Drexel, they rose by 23%, and at West Chester, the Pennsylvania state system’s largest university, international applications rose by 58.8%, the Inquirer reported.
Along with the overall increase in applicants, Temple saw a 24% increase in first-generation applicants and a 9% increase in applicants of color, Shawn Abbot, Temple’s vice provost for admissions, financial aid, and enrollment management, told the Inquirer.
These increases in applicant pools have been linked to the improving state of the pandemic, as well as greater access to in-person programming events such as admitted student days and in-person campus tours, the Inquirer reported.
“Over the last 103 years that [Institute of International Education] has been around, we have been through 12 pandemics, and after each pandemic there has been a surge or an increase in international education,” Sarah Ilchman, co-president of the IIE, told the Inquirer. “People want to get back.”
Penn declined to provide its numbers ahead of the release of admissions decisions in early April. The University, did, however, report a 50% increase in international applications between 2020 and 2021, which was a period that international student enrollment saw a significant decrease nationwide.
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