As a result of increased efforts to recruit students from overseas, and the East Asia region specifically, Miami has made the leap from 326 international students this past spring to 406 this fall.

Of these 406 international students, just over half are at the graduate level (217), and there are 55 different countries represented. David Keitges, Miami's director of international education, saw a number of reasons for students to choose Miami-although he cited the high ranking of the Farmer School of Business and the new construction for the business and engineering schools to be of particular significance.

"The fact that we're a 'Public Ivy'-a ranked university-makes a big difference," Keitges said, who added that Miami concentrates mostly on East Asia for financial reasons. "There are about 4,000 universities and colleges in the U.S., and the fact that our business school is ranked 21 or 22, that's very high. Chinese students are very swayed by rankings. They're very concerned with going to the best school they can get into. A university like Miami is affordable compared to many large private institutions in the U.S., that's one of the reasons we get these applications."

One particular statistic of note is the number of students enrolled from China. According to the Statistical Information for International Students and Scholars, supplied by the Office of International Education, as the number of international students as a whole at Miami rose by 80, the number from China rose from 72 to 123. Furthermore, for both semesters last year, the number of international students within the College of Arts and Science consistently outnumbered those in business. However, the rise in Chinese students came with the sudden growth in popularity of the Farmer School of Business.

"There is a huge surge right now in Chinese admissions all over the country, not just us," Keitges explained. "There are not enough quality educational opportunities in China-there are excellent universities, but there's a whole lot of people-so some students want to come over to the U.S. to get a degree and to perfect their English, which they view as the international language of business."

Associate Director for International Recruitment Aaron Bixler recently went abroad to recruit students from China, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Korea. The trip, which he estimates was about four and a half weeks, was his third such trip for Miami. The visit included nearly two weeks in China alone, where he gave the example of his visit to Hong Kong as the way recruiting is typically done.

"Recruiting is mostly done through large public university fairs, such as the one in Hong Kong of about 90 American schools," Bixler said, who also added that students have not had problems securing visas to come to Miami. "The public fairs attract mostly graduate students, but during the day mostly high school students visit."

This trip also marked the first time Bixler has gone that far inland in China, or "visited the interior" as he puts it, as he made the trek to Cheng Du, where he says most other schools don't go.

A trend that Bixler says he has noticed over the past few years along with the exponentially increasing number of Chinese students is the growing percentage of female students coming from abroad since 2005. After always outnumbering their female counterparts, Bixler said the trend toward women shifted in 2005, and after slightly outnumbering men for both semesters last year, international female students now outnumber the males by more than 40 at Miami.

One concern of these international students that Bixler says should be talked about is the availability of money for scholarships as an incentive to overseas students to come to Miami. Currently, while the number of international students grows, the pool of financial resources to work with remains the same, meaning more students compete for less money.

Bixler said the International Education Scholarship budget is somewhere around $530,000 this year.

"There are presently 72 new and continuing international undergraduate students who hold scholarships that are allocated from this budget (all of these scholarships are renewable, so the amount that is available for new students varies annually depending on the number of returning scholarship holders)," Bixler said via e-mail. "Twenty-nine of these 72 are new students in their first semester at Miami."

He added that these numbers apply to International Education Scholarships only and do not include international students who may hold scholarships exclusively from other offices such as athletics or financial assistance.

Keitges said that scholarships are typically not given to students for more than one quarter of tuition and non-U.S. citizens or are not eligible for financial aid.

"We've always had a pretty high yield rate of international students we admit will show up," Bixler said of this potential issue. "It's started to go down a little bit-the overall numbers were good but the percentage (of students who enroll despite fewer scholarships) decreased a little bit for this fall and that might continue to be a trend as scholarship money is pretty stable and has to be shared among a bigger applicant pool. We're pretty fortunate that we have a special pool just for international students though, as a lot of schools don't have that, so I can't complain much."

One female finance major taking classes at Miami as an exchange student from the Shanghai School of Finance and Economics says her experience will help her greatly in the future.

"I had no real opinion toward Miami (before coming here)," explained junior Yanhua Huang, whose school just began an exchange program with Miami this year, for which she is the first student to enroll in classes here. "It's good to be a pioneer and have your own ideas, I wanted to be the first. America has the most advanced economy in the world and I will have a brighter future (after this) and I will then get a good internship."