Canadian universities are experiencing an obvious boost in applications from U.S. students. Recent policy actions stemming from the Trump administration’s hands-off approach to COVID-19 have contributed to an atmosphere of risk and uncertainty for international students. The University of Toronto and the University of Waterloo have both experienced a tidal wave of interest. The University of British Columbia (UBC) has seen a much smaller jump.
The University of Toronto has experienced a 450 percent rise in applicants from US students. That increase comes right in time for the January deadline for its 2025 programs. While the institution did not elaborate on the rationale for this increase, it is in keeping with a wider trend across Canada. Yet the University of Waterloo has these days received an uptick in American visitors to its campus. Net US web traffic has jumped 15% since September 2024. This boom is most acute in its reformed engineering faculties, which have attracted a surge in interest and applications from American students.
Beyond these initiatives, UBC recently announced a 2% increase in undergraduate applications over last year’s numbers. With some 1,500 US students now studying in both graduate and undergraduate programs at UBC’s two campuses, it’s a popular choice among mainland Americans. The Vancouver campus recently reopened admissions for several graduate programs specifically for US citizens, indicating an effort to attract more international talent.
The just-finished Trump administration took deep cuts that hurt respective research at many American universities, including widely popular Michigan. Even worse, they froze hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding, actively working against this trend. These cuts have been accompanied by an unprecedented pressure on universities to enact policy changes to help stamp out antisemitism on campus. The Biden administration has opened deportation proceedings against some of the detained noncitizen students who took part in pro-Palestinian protests. They have cancelled these foreign students’ visas. In doing so, these actions have infringed upon speech and academic freedoms across the US.
Gage Averill, a spokesperson from UBC, said that it is great empathy for American universities that are under tremendous strain from such policy changes. He noted that the administration’s visa enforcement efforts have grown more stringent. Further, the establishment of a campus safety and security center to track foreign students’ social media activity has only accelerated students’ decisions to pursue educational opportunities overseas.
“We were concerned about the United States universities, our sister institutions in the US, who are under enormous pressure right now,” – Gage Averill
For Canadian institutions such as UBC, responding to these changing dynamics is key to remaining an attractive destination for international students. The Vancouver campus is seeing a 20% increase in campus tour requests from US students, reflecting heightened interest in studying abroad.
As a result, Canada has recently enacted a limit on how many international students can enter the country. This restriction has made things even worse for the second year in a row. Our Canadian counterparts are experiencing a boom in applications from US students.
Universities are already stepping up to the plate and making these changes. They’re looking to break new ground to recruit and retain foreign students in today’s changing geopolitical climate. The actions taken by the Trump administration have created challenges for U.S. universities but simultaneously opened doors for many Canadian institutions eager to welcome new talent from across the border.
