WHY DID THEY COME? A STUDY OF THE MAJOR FACTORS WHICH INFLUENCE THE FOREIGN STUDENT'S DECISION TO APPLY FOR ADMISSION TO SELECTED GRADUATE SCHOOLS OF EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES

This study was guided by the following purposes: (1) to identify the main factors in (a) subjective and objective reasons of foreign students to apply for admission to selected U.S. graduate schools of Education, (b) information received and (c) institutional characteristics which influence the decision to apply for admission and to choose one particular institution; (2) to assess the differential influence of those factors in the foreign students' decision; and (3) to analyze the relationships among reasons to apply (scale FACTOR), usefulness of information received (scale USEINFO), institutional characteristics in choice of a school (scale CHOICEC), satisfaction with the decision to study in the U.S., and demographic variables such as socioeconomic status, region of origin and linguistic affiliation. Twenty-eight hypotheses were derived from these research purposes.;Procedures used in the analysis of the data included descriptive univariate statistics, reliability analyses, exploratory factor analysis techniques, crosstabulations, chi-square tests of independence, Wilcoxon signed-ranks and other non-parametric tests, univariate and multivariate analyses of variance and discriminant analysis.;Major findings of the study included: most important reasons to apply were "opportunity to increase my professional and academic growth", followed by "availability of advanced educational resources and instructional technology equipment and materials". Informational contacts receiving the highest ratings were "letters, brochures from the university regarding specific programs" and "Catalogue or university bulletin or publication". Institutional characteristics with the highest ratings as of their degree of description of the chosen institutions were "the curriculum of this school is outstanding in most educational areas" and "... easy availability of educational technology equipment and materials". Significant relationships were found between region of origin and the main scales of the study, socioeconomic status and satisfaction with study in the U.S. Students from "Developing Nations" assigned higher importance to reasons to apply, agreed more in institutional characteristics describing their current institution and found informational contacts more useful than students from the "Developed West". The classification rate of cases to regions of origin was improved over that of chance, using the two first discriminant functions of the main scales of this study.;The study ends with research and institutional policy recommendations.;Data were collected from 393 foreign graduate students of Education in 19 campuses of 11 U.S. universities through the use of a 99 items survey questionnaire constructed by the author.