US colleges see 20% drop in new foreign undergraduates, but Vietnamese students remain unfazed

New foreign undergraduate enrollment at U.S. colleges fell an average of 20% this spring from a year earlier, and graduate enrollment 24%, according to a survey of 149 institutions led by NAFSA and reported by Bloomberg. There were 4,258 Singaporean students in the U.S. as of September 2025, and the August decline of 4.8% was the smallest among Asian countries and territories, Channel News Asia reported. The U.K. remains the larger destination, with 7,110 Singaporean students in the most recent Higher Education Statistics Agency data. New Ke Yue, a 19-year-old from Singapore, will start at the University of Chicago this September on a full scholarship, two weeks after a U.S. visa overhaul is set to take effect that will cap her stay at four years. She is going anyway, and two Singapore admissions consultancies told The Straits Times that nearly all of their U.S.-bound students are doing the same. Joash Lee, chief executive and founder of admissions consultancy Sedifly, told The Straits Times that all the students his firm is guiding to U.S. colleges are staying the course. About 70% of its students apply to the U.S., and a May 2026 in-house survey found more than 85% of prospective applicants proceeding as planned, though the firm did not disclose the sample size. Students at a campus of the University of Wisconsin in the U.S. Photo from the university's Facebook page Praise Tan, Singapore country manager of consultancy Crimson Education, also expects little impact on students already bound for the U.S. The policy does not forbid extensions, she noted, and most students finish approved degree programs within four years. The rules they are advising around were announced July 16 and take effect Sept. 15. Open-ended periods of stay are replaced by fixed admission periods of up to four years, and students who need longer must file extension requests with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, undergo background checks, submit biometrics and pay filing fees. Those decisions are discretionary and cannot be appealed. Universities can no longer extend a stay administratively, and Forbes reported that USCIS is already carrying a backlog exceeding 11 million pending cases. The Department of Homeland Security said the shift "combats rampant visa abuse and strengthens national security through regular vetting." New expects to finish within four years and avoid the extension process entirely. She is less sure about what follows. "It shows that the climate in the U.S. has increasingly become more hostile to foreigners in general," she told The Straits Times. "But from what I hear from my peers, the universities themselves are still welcoming and helpful towards international students because they see the value in the diverse perspectives that we bring in." Subsidiary of VnExpress License number: 71/GP-CBC, Ministry of Information andCommunications, September 22, 2021 Editor-in-Chief: Pham Van Hieu Email: [email protected]: 028 7300 9999 - Ext 8556 10th floor, Block A FPT Tower, 10 Pham Van Bach, Cau Giay Ward, Hanoi