Linguistic and Cultural Factors in Graduate School Admissions: An Examination of Latin American Students in the U.S.A.

In the last 3 years previous to COVID 19, the number of international graduate students enrolling in higher education programs in the United States has decreased. However, this trend does not hold true for graduate students coming from Latin America. Little is known about the reasons behind the growth of this population in terms of English language proficiency and cultural aspects. This affects all stakeholders: graduate students do not know what type of opportunities they can make use of; American universities do not have enough information to provide Latin American students with a sheltering environment; and Latin American governments are unable to make policies that encourage the application and facilitate admission to graduate school in American universities. The aim of this study was to establish a baseline to understand the linguistic and cultural complexities of the Latin American population in graduate school in the United States. To do so, surveys and interviews were carried out to explore academic experiences, cultural influences and socioeconomic patterns that influenced the admission of students to graduate school. Mixed methods were used to describe the patterns of the survey responses quantitatively (e.g. TOEFL scores by skills) while leaving room for confirmatory qualitative analysis. The participants of this study were 126 graduate students from one of the American universities with the highest number of Latin American graduate students. The results of this study underscore the importance of effective English language instruction in college for reaching the graduate school admission scores, especially in cases when English language training in K-12 had little impact on the functional proficiency of the learner. Also, there is a body of evidence indicating that short undergraduate research internships could be one of the opportunities with the highest potential to recruit graduate Latin American students, regardless of their degree or socioeconomic background.