How to thrive as an international student in U.S. Academia

There are a million think-pieces and articles on how to break into academia as an international student; I am guilty of having one too. While this is an important topic to write and talk about, being preoccupied with applications meant that most of us never had enough time to think about what it means to be an international student within the U.S. I was caught extremely off guard by the dearth of structures and resources I would need to be able to navigate academic spaces – or the amount of paperwork that was required to merely exist as an international student!

With a slew of DEI initiatives slowly making their way into universities, specifically within Social Psychology programs, departments are now more likely to recruit globally, and you are fortunately no longer the lone international strider in your program (or at least I hope you are not). But as we are finding it true with most DEI initiatives, recruitment and representation don’t necessarily mean that universities know how to support international students which makes them vulnerable to falling through the cracks in the system.

This is obviously terrible and deleterious for multiple reasons. First, it has implications for international students’ mental health and professional success. Second, visa uncertainties, financial decisions, and the opaque nature of the academy can throw out a lot of students who bring a lot of value to it. International students bring unique perspectives to our fields, we have a voice and opinions that have the potential to challenge the status quo and improve how we do science. It is clearly in everyone’s best interest to keep these students in the academy. But the question remains, how can we make this a reality?

While the lack of structure and resources did catch me unaware, there are several steps international students can take to keep themselves afloat within U.S. academia. This is obviously not to say that students should be fending for themselves. I believe a two-pronged approach is necessary to retain international students: the system and the students need to work in tandem to bring tangible change that helps international students thrive. Two years into my PhD program, I consider myself as still being fairly new to the system, but there have been a couple of things that I have found to work incredibly well for me as I make my way through the program:

  1. Cultivate your network: I cannot emphasize this enough. Seek out colleagues - other international students, fellow students of color), empathetic faculty members, positionality affinity groups, and allies within and across your program and department respectively. If you are feeling shy about cold-DMing or emailing people, remember that they’re likely seeking the same community and kinship that you are. Having people I can share resources with, chat with, or even just vent to after a difficult week has made all the difference.

  2. Connect with movements you care about: Academia may make you feel like you need to self-censor to succeed. I have been advised both explicitly and implicitly to stay behind the scenes, and to not ruffle any feathers. It’s bullshit not good advice; It’s an easy recipe to feeling purposeless and doing uninspired research. I would recommend that graduate students, especially international graduate students and graduate students of color, should be authentic to themselves and their values. It is indeed easier to do “apolitical” work that reproduces white supremacist, colonial and Eurocentric hegemony, but most of us came here with the intention of changing the world through our research – to use our little experiments as a means of highlighting injustices and working to rectify them. It is worth ruffling a few feathers if you are able to do that.

  3. Advocate for yourself (again and again): A professor recently told me to “not be afraid to make noise” – and I want to pass that on to anyone reading this blog. I have found that I have to constantly “make noise”, or advocate for myself to get access to information and resources, and to make myself heard. Go ahead and CC everyone who can help on that email, follow up if you don’t hear a response, and don’t be afraid to ask for things you need to make your PhD journey a little easier – the worst thing they can do is leave you on read.

  4. Know who’s in charge: Networking isn’t really a skill they teach you in graduate school, but they should. For me, networking used to evoke a nasty icky feeling. It felt too transactional and sometimes it still does, but knowing who’s in charge or someone who would know who’s in charge helps so much! Who do you reach out to for questions about your fellowship? Who can you ask questions about housing? Who is your union representative? Who can help you with registration queries? Who will know the best/cheapest coffee places around? I have found that asking senior students in the program is the best place to start! And definitely information you want to pay forward to newer students in the program.

  5. Excel sheet for fellowships, grants, and other funding that international students are eligible to apply for.

  6. Slack community for international scholars in the U.S.:  For all your visa, immigration or any other question relating to being a non-resident. The link expires every 30 days so feel free to email me and I can send you an updated one!

  7. Cultivate a non-academic network: Find your coffee shop, find people who don’t constantly talk about IRBs and grants and participant recruitment. Find hobbies that nourish your spirit, know that academia isn’t everything despite its insistence that it is.

  8. Marathon-not-a-sprint: You’ve probably heard this before but it bears repeating. It can get tiring to be constantly ‘on’ – pick your battles, know how to prioritize and rest often.

  9. Therapy.   

What is your school’s and program’s role in all this?

In an ideal world, most of the leg work in helping you acclimate to graduate school should have been done by your program. Unfortunately, we live in a world far from ideal. While recruitment of international students has gone up (as it should!) –  many departments don’t know how to adequately support and retain international students. Here a few tangible ways in which schools can do make international students’ life easier on an institutional level:

  1. Acknowledge your international students will have different needs: Listen to recurring problems, acknowledge they exist, and be transparent with international students you are recruiting about these problems so they can make informed decisions. Most programs don’t realize that international students have to follow different rules – we have work and visa restrictions, our passports don’t always allow us to attend international conferences with ease, OPT and CPT programs require support through departmental courses, and international students also have an extremely limited window to secure jobs after graduation – what does this mean for students wishing to go on the market? For students who would like to secure off-campus internships? For students wishing to apply for large grants? Students and faculty need to work together to establish protocols and processes that can help international students make most of their graduate school experience.  

  2. Learn to anticipate problems that recur: At my school international students always get paid later than citizens, but many faculty had no idea this happened. This creates uncertainty and confusion. Departments can work with the school to ensure timely payments. If this is at all not possible, even informing international students this bit of information ahead of time can allow them to plan around these…quirks.

  3. Student representation: All graduate students are not created equal, and student representation should purposively include representation of international students. Also know that your Canadian or European international student is going to have a very different experience in U.S. academia to your South Asian or Latin American graduate student.

About the Author

Haniya Rumaney (hrumaney@gradcenter.cuny.edu) is a PhD student in Basic and Applied Social Psychology at the Graduate Center, CUNY. Haniya's research interests primarily revolve around investigating the antecedents and consequences of religious and other identity-based stigma using social identity and intersectionality frameworks. In the past, she has conducted stigma and prejudice-focused research by employing survey experiments and natural language processing techniques. Her latest studies focus on how stigma drives endorsement of certain conspiracy theories. Prior to joining BASP, Haniya worked at the Sidanius Lab (Harvard University), and was a research assistant and program manager on a project funded by the International Growth Centre, UK. 

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