Nigeria Has 12th Highest Number of Foreign Students in U.S., Envoy Says

Nigeria Has 12th Highest Number of Foreign Students in U.S., Envoy Says

General F. John Bray, United States Consul revealed that Nigeria has the most astounding number of students from sub-Saharan Africa studying in the US and positioned 12th twelfth among the more than one million international students in the country.  35,364 of the international students in the US were from sub-Saharan Africa according to him, as he spoke during a pre-flightorientation for Nigerian students heading to US to study at the Consulate General in Lagos.

He added that, there are 11,710 students from Nigeria studying in the United States presently and among which 49.5% - undergraduates

36.2% - graduate students, 

2% - non-degree candidates and the remaining

 12.3% - Optional Practical Training.

There has been a rise in the number of Nigerians studying in the US, and with these percentages; it clearly states that there has been a 9.7% increase as compared to last year. He stated that students from Nigeria are across all the 50 states in America and about 800 attended institutions in each of America's 50 states. The most popular attended state -Texas has about 1,540 students whereas the most attended college/university is Houston Community College, with about 220 students.

The US Department of State according to the Consular General has granted scholarships to about 250 Nigerian students from the Lagos centre of its EducationUSA program to study at institutions in the US. He again added that, “EducationUSA was a US Department of State network of over 425 international student advising centre’s in more than 175 countries promoting higher education in America to students around the world by offering accurate, comprehensive, and current information about opportunities to study at any of the over 4,700 accredited post-secondary institutions in the US.” 

The Consular General furthered top say that “ EducationUSA is your official source on US higher education” and  about 250 student-members of the Lagos EducationUSA Center studying at U.S. institutions in the fall of 2018, have received scholarships from US institutions totaling over $4 million. A lot of students have benefitted from the scholarships offered and many more a yet to benefit from them. One of which is a 12^th grader who has been offered a full scholarship to Harvard to study political science and most graduate students also gaining full scholarships on doctoral programs in the STEM fields through EducationUSA. Again Bray added that Six Opportunity Fund Program grantees will be going for their fully funded PhD programs in STEM fields, and that he is very pleased with EducationUSA Lagos for reaching about 25,000 students this year through different means such as at the centre, on-line, at fairs, etc. information on studying in the US EducationUSA

 Source: EducationUSA Lagos