The number of international students choosing to study in the US rose last year despite fears that numbers would drop as the result of the global recession.

According to information from the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, enrollment by international students rose by 3% in the last academic year, rising to 586,000 by the end of 2009.

A report by the National Science Foundation, who released the figures, found that the number of students choosing to study science and engineering rose by 4% and now accounts for 44% of the total number of international students in the US, although a large proportion of these students were in graduate programmes.

However, across all subjects it has been found that there was a larger increase in undergraduate international students than there was in graduate students. In a report published by the Institute of International Education it shows that numbers of first-time undergraduate international students in the US are growing at a steady rate and that if growth continued at the current rate, international undergraduate student numbers would become larger than those at graduate level. Currently the numbers are roughly equal.

These new figures mean that despite the financial climate, American colleges are still able to attract international students. The most significant rise has come from larger numbers of Chinese students choosing the US for undergraduate studies. Over the last few years, the number of students coming from China to the US has shot up by 60%. This significant rise has certainly enabled the rise to continue in the face of falling numbers coming from Europe, South Korea and India.