This study explored how academic relationships, acculturation strategies, and graduate experiences influence international graduate students’ academic adjustment to U.S. graduate life in a large Midwestern university in the United States. To understand international graduate students’ academic experiences, ten international graduate students from different countries were interviewed about their academic experiences and three research questions were examined, including: a) what are international graduate students concerned about in their academic lives; b) how do the themes and subthemes influence their adaptation to a U.S. graduate school; and c) what are the major and the minor subthemes related to their academic adaptation?
Qualitative methodology was employed, including purposeful participant selection, observations, interviews, data coding, and data triangulation. In addition, mixed data analyses were used in this study to enlarge the effect sizes of the qualitative findings.
The findings show that international graduate students’ learning behaviors and attitudes are heavily influenced by the interactions with professors and fellow students, prejudice from school services, and family concerns. Unlike international undergraduate students, international graduate students are also affected by research concerns and graduate assistant work in U.S. graduate schools. Such working experiences have brought international graduate assistants both opportunities and difficulties in their transition to U.S. graduate education. Despite their similarities in circumstance, these students’ adjustment processes may vary due to their language proficiency, cultural knowledge, learning attitudes, and the utilization of school services.
The above findings of this study will not only help international graduate become aware of their academic needs and expectations, but also help U.S. institutions understand their international graduate students’ academic adjustment processes, needs, and dissatisfaction. Moreover, giving the increasing trend of international education in the world, this study may also contribute to the scholarly inquiry of international students’ cross-cultural acculturation in the larger society.