When Chinmayi Ramasubramanian ’28, a student from southern India, was applying to Princeton last year, her teachers told her they did not know what a recommendation letter was.
“I had to write the example letter for them and then tell them to write it the same way,” she said.
For most American high school seniors applying to Princeton, the concepts of personal statements, extracurricular lists, and recommendation letters are familiar. But in interviews with The Daily Princetonian, international students from four countries and three continents reported difficulty navigating Princeton’s “holistic” admissions process, which differs from grade-based systems that are more common abroad.
Who seem to be missing from the larger international student body are students who were exposed to American or western higher education in their home countries before matriculating. Princeton had a total of 2,052 international students in the 2022–23 academic year, 681 of which were undergraduates, according to the Davis International Center. Though this number has increased since 2021, international students expressed concern with what they perceive as an exclusive system, encouraging the University to expand its outreach to international students from a range of backgrounds, not simply those with the resources to navigate a culturally distinct system.
When Gil Joseph ’25 — one of two current Princeton undergraduates from Haiti — was a seventh grader at the prestigious Institution Saint-Louis de Gonzague, he realized that attending an American university was possible after a senior at his school was accepted to MIT. He started learning English in eighth grade by watching English films and videos on social media sites such as Vine.
“[My friends and I] during lunch breaks would speak only English with our very terrible accents, but over time, that’s how we got better at English, because the goal was to apply to schools in the U.S.,” he told the ‘Prince’ in an interview.
Joseph was familiar with the application process because his brother attended Princeton, graduating in 2023. He also received support from Education Haiti — a nonprofit organization created by Haitian students to aid in the American application process — and attended American summer programs such as the Telluride Association Summer Seminar.
“My experience is very different from the experience of the typical Haitian student,” he noted.
Joseph told the ‘Prince’ that Princeton fails to attract applicants from Haiti because students believe their backgrounds are not competitive, not knowing that the University considers the context of a given applicant’s situation when examining resumes. He specifically noted American extracurricular culture, which he says is not found in Haiti.
“[American] people have a strong extracurricular culture,” Joseph explained. “In Haiti, it’s not big. You go to school, then after school, you leave. My school was peculiar in that we had a few options that people would do.”
Unlike colleges in the United States, Haitian institutions focus more heavily on grades when evaluating applications. There, college entrance is granted after an exam in the senior year of high school, instead of an evaluation of a comprehensive application.
“It’s a bit grades based than in the U.S., which is a whole different beast of ‘what do you want to do?’” Joseph said contrasting the higher education application process internationally versus in the U.S.
University spokesperson Jennifer Morrill described the ways in which the Office of Admissions conducts outreach to prospective international applicants.
“In the fall, admission officers travel to different countries to educate applicants about Princeton and connect with prospective students in their own communities,” she wrote in an email to the ‘Prince.’ “Additionally, we work directly with college counselors and community-based organizations outside the United States to ensure access, understanding, and transparency in the Princeton admission process for international applicants,” Morrill continued.
“This has resulted in an increase in virtual programming to provide greater access to Princeton and its community.”
Ramasubramanian learned about the American application process not through Princeton’s outreach, but by attending the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair in ninth grade and MIT’s Research Science Institute in 11th grade. [Seems like this is a trend]
“That was the best thing that could happen in terms of college applications,” she said.
Still, for Ramasubramanian, confusion around Princeton’s application process emerged from the difference in how colleges in India evaluate applications, paralleling Joseph’s experience.
“We are from a culture that is very exam-oriented,” she said. For example, the Indian Institutes of Technology — India’s top engineering schools — use the Joint Entrance Examination to determine a student’s acceptance, rather than a holistic process like Princeton’s.
Though Princeton held informational sessions in India, Ramasubramanian said they were inaccessible to her because they were concentrated in the northern part of the country, far from her home in the south.
“The South really doesn’t get much attention in India, especially places like Tamil Nadu, which is the southernmost state,” she said, suggesting that Princeton should make sessions more widespread throughout the country.
Ramasubramanian also noted that many in India are unfamiliar with Princeton, meaning gathering information is largely done independently.
“There are a lot of people … I just meet day to day who ask me, ‘Oh, what are you doing after 12th grade?’” she explained. “I’m like, ‘I’m going to Princeton.’ They blink at me, like, ‘Oh, good.’ Because they have no clue what Princeton is.”
Joanna Adeoye ’26 was drawn to the flexibility of American colleges compared to those in her home country, the United Kingdom, which require students to choose an academic track before applying. But she, too, spoke of struggling to understand the application process.
British schools typically require highly structured essays that focus on a student’s academic interests and achievements. The American personal statement, on the other hand, asked her to reflect on her personality and life experiences.
“I didn’t know how to approach it, just because we never do anything like that,” she explained in an interview with the ‘Prince.’ “I think about how many people missed out on being able to apply because they were so confused by the process, but they couldn’t access the resources to find out more.”
Some well-resourced schools do provide guidance to students going through the American application process, but often with high tuition, they might be out of reach for most students in their countries.
Leyuan Ma ’25 told the ‘Prince’ that her international high school — the Experimental High School Attached to Beijing Normal University — prepared her for the application process. Her school has sent students to Princeton each year for the past five years.
“Our school has very experienced counselors who can give students guidance on their application documents and so on,” Ma wrote in an email to the ‘Prince.’
International schools in China, which tend to be better equipped to advise students on the American application process according to Ma, typically charge higher tuition and are highly selective in their own admissions processes.
“Many other high school students do not know enough about the application process … so there is one less way to get into the top colleges in the world,” Ma wrote. “Studying abroad is ultimately the choice of middle-class families and above.”
She added that the effort required to apply to American schools — like taking the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) exam — is not worth it for many low-income Chinese students, who recognize that they are not guaranteed a position at the few American schools with need-blind financial aid policies.
“Unless U.S. schools as a whole increase the importance of grades and academics in applications like U.K. schools, and provide more financial aid for Chinese students, I think it will be hard to change the status quo,” Ma wrote.
Still, Joseph said he believes that Princeton should expand its efforts to recruit international students from a broader range of socioeconomic backgrounds.
“If Princeton wants to attract the best talents from every part of the world,” he said, “then maybe they have to do a bit more at filling those gaps.”
Sastha Tripathi and Jingquan Tao are contributing Features writers.
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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