Of a population of 355 international students at Tufts, only 32 are currently receiving financial aid, Leon Braswell, Director of International and Transfer Admissions, said.
This number is relatively low compared to the 49 percent of all Tufts undergraduates who receive some kind of aid.
"Tufts is not a need blind institution like Harvard, Yale and Princeton," Braswell said. "We have very limited funding for non-US citizens."
"The fact that we give financial aid to international students is very recent for Tufts," Braswell said, "Historically Tufts didn't give financial aid [to international students] so the only students who applied were the ones that could afford it."
According to Braswell, 2000 was the first year that international students received aid from the university, which is currently working towards improving funding for non-US citizen students.
According to Director of Financial Aid Patricia Reilly, the university has spent roughly $750,000 on international student financial aid this year. That sum comes from a fund that is separate from the fund for domestic students.
Part of the difficulty of giving financial aid to international students is that they are ineligible for state or federal aid, Reilly said. Accordingly, private funding or aid from the university must address financial need.
International students are an essential part of the university's mission, according to University President Lawrence Bacow.
"[They are] one of the things that gives Tufts flavor... they bring a global perspective to our campus," Bacow said.
"Fletcher is the oldest IR school in the country [and] 40 to 50 percent of our students go abroad" Bacow said. He also alluded to Tufts' high ratio of graduates who volunteer for the Peace Corps. "International students are essential to our global focus."
According to Provost Jamshed Bharucha, the Tufts International Board of Overseers is working to raise resources for this international mission.
In one helpful step, Tufts became a Davis Incentive school, joining the Davis United World College Scholars Program. The program subsidizes the entire tuition for students to attend member schools such as Colby, Princeton, and Middlebury.
Tufts receives $10,000 per student enrolled in the program. Five Tufts international students currently receive funding from the Davis Program.
"It is a start, and a really good program," Braswell said.
According to Bharucha, there has also been a scholarship fund for international students set up in the name of Boryana Damyanova, the Tufts senior from Bulgaria who was killed in a pedestrian accident this November.
Bruce Male, the Chairman of the International Board of Overseers, sponsored the scholarship that allowed Damyanova to attend Tufts.
"We want a campus that fosters diversity," Bharucha said, "Having a socio-economically diverse spectrum of domestic and international students is important to understanding our country and other countries better."
Georgetown University is also struggling to provide financial aid for international students.
"We are need blind [when admitting] international students, but we simply can't guarantee enough funding for all of them," said Kathryn Timlin, an admissions officer at Georgetown.
Georgetown boasts a 10 percent international population, compared to Tufts' 15 percent.
