The number of international undergraduate students accepting admission to Queen’s has increased by 79 per cent from the 2013-14 academic year, bringing 281 international students to Kingston this September to begin their degrees.

Principal Daniel Woolf said in the March strategic framework that the University intends to increase international undergraduate students to 10 per cent of the total undergraduate population.

6.3 per cent of this year’s incoming class is comprised of international students. According to the 2013-14 enrolment report, 6.1 per cent of first-year undergraduate students in 2013-14 were international.

The top three countries of citizenship that undergraduate international students come from are China, the United States and South Korea. An international student is defined as someone who is a temporary resident of Canada, and doesn’t include people who have immigrated to Canada or hold Canadian citizenship but live elsewhere.

As part of the University’s objective to increase international enrolment, it has also increased recruitment efforts. Last fall, Queen’s hired Sunny Wang as a recruitment officer in the China Liaison Office in Shanghai, and earlier this year joined CALDO, a consortium of leading Canadian research universities whose emphasis is on recruitment in Latin America.

Emma Harvie, an American student from Duluth, Minnesota, said there was no recruitment presence from Queen’s at her high school.

Harvie, ArtSci ’16, holds dual citizenship with the U.S. and Canada and wouldn’t be defined as an international student by the University.

“Canadian schools aren’t advertised at all at my high school, I just found out about it through my dad and online resources,” Harvie told the Journal via email.

2014-15 tuition for international students varies depending on program. For engineering students, the course fee per unit is $1,067.66; for Arts and Science, it’s $913.76. Students enrolled in a full course load of 30 units pay $32,029.80 in engineering and $27,412.80 in Arts and Science — before other fees.

International students are also required to enroll in the University Health Insurance Plan (UHIP). UHIP is equivalent to the Ontario Health Insurance Plan and costs $648 per year, while paying up to $1,000 per year in coverage.

Ray Wen, a student from Shenzhen, China, said he’d always wanted to go to a university in the West.

“Canada was one of my top choices. Frankly, I did not hear anything about Queen’s until I search[ed] for universities in Ontario,” Wen, CompSci ’17, told the Journal via email.

Part of why he chose Queen’s was that he was offered a scholarship.

“Tuition fees for international students are really high here. I am crossing my fingers to hope that they won’t raise the fees too much next year,” he added.

Wen said recruiters from Queen’s didn’t come to his high school while he was a student there, but did after he’d left for university.

“I was in a local public school though. I think people from Queen’s had been to the international schools in my region long before I left,” he said.