Adaptation of International Students to College Life in the USA

¶ … Second World War, more and more people began to see the United States as a land of all opportunities. However, not all of them were willing to take the chance of an exodus on American soil, so an increasing number chose a shortcut to the American dream. Indeed, earning a diploma, be it a BA, a master's degree or a full PhD at a successful university in the United States and then returning to the country of origin to use it became an option for many.

Studies have shown that the number of foreign students in the Untied States have increased at all levels after 1950. As such, international students have reached a proportion of 12% and 26.7% respectively for masters and doctorate levels (Misra and Castillo, 2004) out of the total number of students. Additionally, the ascending trend is expected to continue in the future as well (Kishimito, Yi, 2003, p 333).

As Misra and Castillo have pointed out, college is "a stressful time for many students." The research the two have performed pointed out several stress factors (stressors), as well as the results of these stressors, out of which the researchers have identified four categories of reactions.

Yi and Kishimoto followed up on the research and studied the groups of students that appealed to counseling in their problems. International students were likely to have additional stressors that would influence their behavior. For example, their study showed that 70% of the foreign students were worried about their future. Misra and Castillo showed much of the same conclusions in this sense.

3. My own experience and some of the previous research on the subject leads me to believe that adaptation to college life in the U.S. is harder for international students than the American ones, because of increased stress levels. Following some ideas from Misra and Castillo, we may briefly describe some of the stressors that differ from the two categories.

First of all, any international student would have to cope with the new economic, social or linguistic challenges in the United States. Even assuming that they know the language, they will still never be assimilated as native speakers and will as such have a handicap over the native Americans. The social factor plays an important role as a stressor as well: they will have to assimilate the new social norms they will come across in the Untied States.

Second of all, and Yi and Kishimoto have partly proved this in their essay, the challenge for a foreign student is much tougher than for the American student because the expectations are much greater in the former case. Indeed, a foreign student will probably have come across a series of sacrifices in order to be able to study abroad. Expectations are high, he must have high grades in order to justify his learning abroad. As such, academic stressors are an important factor as well.

4. Our research is attempting to comparatively evaluate the level of stress involved with international students as compared to the American students. Following our intuitive description presented here above, we will be expecting to find that stress levels are higher in the case of international students, because of an increased number of stressor elements.

The sample of the population will be provided by an equal number of international and American students, who will be completing the same survey, but in different rooms, so as not to influence each other's results. There was no differentiation made by sex or age. The age group ranged from 21 to 24, while results on the centralization of demographic information showed that 54% of the people who took the survey were women.

In my case, the independent variable (IV) is represented by the increased stress levels, while the dependant variable (DV) shows the harder adaptation for international students.

The research methodology proposed does not involve any real process of experimentation, because students are already in a stressed environment. This means that I am already using this assumption in the research and solely need to record the state or level of stress that the international students are in, comparatively to the American students.

5. The research performed showed a difference in stress levels of 27% between the group of American students and the group of international students. This comes to meet the hypothesis we have previously laid out.

The use of correlational over empirical research is justified in this case, because of several reasons. Following a widespread definition of correlational research, this method involves "only the relationship between two variables and do not manipulate one variable to determine its effects on another variable" (on the Internet at http://www.webref.org/psychology/c/correlational_study.htm). I am studying exactly this in this particular case. Indeed, I am not manipulating the indirect variable, which already exists, but I am interested in recording the levels of the direct variable and the relationship between the two.