By Craig Leroux, Senior Communications Officer

With a 79 per cent increase in the number of international students accepting Queen’s offer of admission this year, the university is on track for Principal Woolf’s goal of increasing the proportion of international undergraduate degree students to 10 per cent. 281 international students, or 6.3 per cent of the incoming class, will begin their Queen’s degrees in September.

International students who arrived at Queen's this January participated in an orientation session hosted by the Queen's University International Centre.

“This is excellent news as we continue to ramp up our international recruitment efforts to meet the objectives we set in the strategic framework,” says Daniel Woolf, Principal and Vice-Chancellor. “When students come to Queen’s from around the world it helps make the university a place to develop global perspectives, and it establishes networks that will be of benefit to all our students. In the longer run, many of these students will return to their home countries and help build our reputation internationally.”

As part of its growing international recruitment efforts, Queen’s recently hired Sunny Wang as a recruitment officer in the Queen’s China Liaison Office in Shanghai, increased its outreach to international guidance counsellors, and joined CALDO, a consortium of leading Canadian research universities focused on recruitment in Latin America.

“Queen’s is well respected within Canada for its exceptional student learning experience and supportive campus community,” says Principal Woolf. “It is those same attributes that will make us a university of choice for talented international students.”

Queen’s offers extensive support for international students through the Queen’s University International Centre and programs like QBridge, offered by the School of English, which delivers academic English language training to international students before they begin their studies at Queen’s.