When many U.S. students think of studying abroad, places like Paris, Rome and Tokyo might come to mind, but for students in other countries, Norman is at the top of their lists.
International students often choose OU over other U.S. universities because Norman has a lower cost of living than more urban areas, said Jack Hobson, assistant director for program development and study abroad adviser.
“Oklahoma builds a reputation of being warm and welcoming and easier to fit into, more than more urban areas,” Hobson said. “It’s still quite an anomaly to be an international student in Oklahoma. They might be less noticed in other places, so there are some benefits to that.”
Mauricio Maclean, University College freshman from Bolivia, said he chose OU because it isn’t as expensive as many of the universities he considered.
“I was looking for a small city and good campus environment,” he said.
But not every international student has a choice of where he or she studies.
“My uncle chose this for me because it’s one of the best petroleum engineering schools in the world,” said Mohammed Aldabbous, University College freshman from Saudi Arabia.
Maytham Al-Hajji, also a University College freshman from Saudi Arabia, said OU was selected for him by the oil company he works for in his home country.
Regardless of their reasons for coming to campus, many international students said they are pleased with the international community on campus.
Charlotte Guillard, economics senior from France, said she wants to study economic development in South America after graduation and chose OU because it has a better Latin American studies program than universities in her home country.
She said the international community at OU is helping her understand her area of focus better through experiences and exchanges with students from the region.
“I’ve met a lot of Latin Americans here because there are a lot of them here,” she said. “I’ve gotten to talk to them and practice my Spanish.”
Uyoyouoghene Eto, University College freshman, said diversity at OU was not a surprise to her. Eto, who was born in Nigeria but is most recently from Holland, said OU’s international reputation was one of the reasons she chose OU.
“I knew people that were here from when I was young,” Eto said. “They said it was a really good international community — that I’d feel at home.”
And Eto said she definitely does.
The Oklahoma Daily is pleased to provide you the opportunity to share your thoughts about this article. We encourage lively debate on the issues of the day, but we ask you refrain from using profanity or other offensive speech, engaging in personal attacks or name-calling, posting advertising, or straying from the topic at hand. To comment, you must be a registered user of OUDaily.com. Thanks for taking the time to offer your thoughts.
You must be logged in to leave a comment. Log in | Register
Wasilla_blogzilla 3 years ago
Regarding my last post, for clarification's sake. I did graduate from an Oklahoma high school and was a bona-fide resident of Oklahoma when enrolling at OU.
Wasilla_blogzilla 3 years ago
Nothing against international students, but when I attended (1970's), crowded classes were priortized by numerical student ID's represented by social security numbers. As a US citizen who grew up in Kansas, my SSN began with 5xx. Alien students were arbitrarily assigned a student ID # beginning with 000 which gave them priority for crowded classes over over US born citizens. I would hope that in the last 30+ years that the policy has changed.