WalletHub published “2017’s Most & Least Educated States” last month. Based on their findings, we raise the following two questions:
- Are the most popular states to international students also the most educated states?
- Is the number of a state’s top schools closely correlated with the state’s ranking in “Most & Least Educated States”?
In order to answer the questions, we used data from 3 sources for our table below:
- “Rank in Most Educated” – from WalletHub
- “Rank in Int’l Students” and “# of Int’l Students”- from The Open Doors Data
- “# of Top Schools”- from Schools’ websites, U.S. News & World Report, Forbes, Princeton Review
Note: “Int’l” is the abbreviation for “International”; only the top 42 states are listed in “Rank in Most Educated.”
Most Educated States vs International Students vs Top Schools
Our Findings:
(1) The “Rank in Most Educated” is not closely correlated with the “# of Int’l Students” and the “# of Top Schools.”
(2) The “Rank in Int’l Students” is not closely related to the “Rank in Most Educated.”
We have also found that the more top schools a state has, the more international students it attracts. This reveals college rankings do matter to international students’ school selection.