The Council of Graduate Schools has done a yearly report on international student applications, admissions, and enrollments since 2004. For the first time since fall 2003, it found that 2017 applications from international graduate students dropped by 3 percent and enrollment by 1 percent compared to 2016. The 2019 report from the Council of Graduate Schools showed that for fall 2018, applications from international graduate students fell by 4 percent and first-time enrollment was down 1 percent from 2017. The bulk of the declines were from master’s and certificate programs, and from students from the Middle East and North Africa, where five of the seven nations included in the January 2017 travel ban are located. For instance, in fall 2017, applications from prospective Iranian students dropped by 18 percent.

The president of the Council of Graduate Schools, Suzanne Ortega, said she also understood the concern that motivated the student protests and urged her institutions to make clear their acceptance of pass-fail grading.

Suzanne Ortega, president of the Council of Graduate Schools, said she agreed with almost all of the points in the students’ letter — particularly with the idea that an applicant should be judged on an entire package of information rather than a single piece of evidence. Some universities have issued statements emphasizing holistic file review, she said.

Graduate students are a different story. April 15 is a common deadline to accept financial support from a university the following academic year. These types of support include graduate scholarships, fellowships and assistantships. The Council of Graduate Schools, a national organization for graduate deans, hasn’t changed its deadline but cautions that individual colleges and programs could move theirs.

If you are interested in a position like mine that supports graduate students and postdoctoral scholars, I would explore the resources of the Graduate Career Consortium and Council of Graduate Schools as a starting point. You can unearth more of these professional organizations by adding this question to the informational interviews that you’re conducting. 

Students seeking to transfer to graduate schools could be at an even bigger disadvantage compared to regular applicants and other transfers. That being said, Suzanne T. Ortega, president of the Council of Graduate Schools, told Teen Vogue it’s “hard to imagine that any graduate school isn’t going to take the current circumstances into consideration when assessing future graduate applications.”

Suzanne Ortega, president of the Council of Graduate Schools, said that many graduate programs admit students conditional on their achieving certain scores on the TOEFL or an equivalent exam. Those exams aren't available now in China and elsewhere, so graduate schools are working on other ways to evaluate students' English ability.

Although data released by the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) this month shows increased graduate applications and enrollments at U.S. universities for the first time since fall 2016, the Graduate Management Admissions Council’s (GMAC) most recent application trends report documents a steep 13.7% decline in international applications to American business programs from 2018 to 2019.

International graduate application and first-time enrollment rates have increased at U.S. universities for the first time since fall 2016, reported the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS).

After two consecutive years of declines in international graduate student applications and first-time enrollments, U.S. institutions reported increases in both categories for 2019. That’s the key takeaway from a just-released survey of American graduate schools conducted by the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS).