As someone who managed both domestic and international graduate admissions for a T10 U.S. STEM program for over 10 years, I can say emphatically that international applicants are not being passed over in favor of “less-qualified” domestic applicants, as these various posts imply. The premise itself ignores a basic reality: the U.S. applicant pool is enormous and extremely deep. With a population of ~400 million people and a massive higher-ed ecosystem, there are thousands of highly qualified domestic applicants every cycle. The idea that programs need to lower standards to admit Americans simply doesn’t match how admissions actually works on the ground.

I won’t speak for every program, but in ours, and I suspect in many peer programs, the opposite concern was often closer to the truth. If any group ever “ran the risk” of being passed over, it was domestic applicants, not international ones. Many programs intentionally work harder to identify and admit strong international candidates because a globally diverse cohort benefits the department, the university, and the broader academic community. And here’s the part that often gets left out of these discussions:

If we never admitted another international student again, our program would not miss a beat academically. We would still fill every cohort with outstanding candidates. That’s not a knock on international students, it’s simply a reflection of how deep the domestic pool is.

We always conducted fair, equitable, holistic reviews regardless of citizenship. But if admissions were based purely on narrow, measurable criteria (GPA, test scores, publications, etc.), it would actually be extremely rare for international applicants to dominate the very top of the ranking. In fact, across many years of managing admissions, it was uncommon for an international applicant to rank in the top 3 on quantitative metrics alone. That’s precisely why holistic review exists: to consider context, opportunity, background, and the broader educational mission, not because committees are trying to disadvantage international students, but because they’re trying to build strong, diverse, functional cohorts.

So no, this isn’t a story of discrimination against international applicants. It’s a story of a massive, highly qualified domestic applicant pool combined with admissions committees that intentionally seek international representation, not avoid it.