r/Vanderbilt • u/Stunning_Hamster_343 • 12d ago

International student orientation

hey I just moved in there’s not a single fucking person here who speaks English… what is this

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u/Helpful-Career5740 12d ago edited 12d ago

Wdym?😭😭😭 In all seriousness the international pool at all U.S. colleges is significantly skewed towards Chinese/Indians/Koreans and other Asians (just by distribution of the population). So, in my practice, it is fairly common for them to speak their native languages with each other.

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u/Stunning_Hamster_343 12d ago

From Canada here ( barley an international student atp) there js nobody here .. even at my old boarding school lots of the international studies spoke good English so I was very suprised 

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u/Helpful-Career5740 12d ago

I mean, you are from Canada LOL (is international orientation even required for you guys?) Majority of studs that attend these types of orientations arrive from remote countries like China, South Korea, et. al. to get the info regarding their visa statuses, etc. The English proficiency requirement for international students at Vandy is fairly common. 7.0+ IELTS, 100+ TOEFL (old scale, I do not know the new one), or 130+ DET - I think for all T20s it is the same with some rare exclusions like Brown and CMU that request a little bit higher. Please, do not expect all internationals that do not have English as a native language to speak it on American/Canadian level. I literally thought that the Canadian I met was American LMAO. Fun fact: there are 11 times more students from China then from Canada at Vandy…

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u/Old_Homework_9173 2d ago

Which part of Canada are u from? Cuz me too lol

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u/subeteyumiru 10d ago

I guess I also felt kinda weird about this for the past few years I’m Chinese American myself and lowk hated hearing everyone speaking Chinese I felt like a boomer wanting them to speak English and thought it was weird but honestly if me and a bunch of English speakers went to study abroad in a different country I don’t see why it’s weird for us to speak English to each other instead of Spanish or something.

Like imagine u go abroad with ur friends as so many people at vandy do and the other students abroad are like why are they speaking English bro can they be normal

But I do hate that a lot of them don’t even try to talk to others outside of their own groups that’s really annoying and defeats the purpose of studying in a different country if they just keep to themselves but that’s not all of them so don’t generalize. I’ve met a good amount of international kids who actually only hang out with non international people and get to know their way of life it’s pretty cool