Q: What are the challenges faced by international students?

Your question is quite wide-ranging as it touches upon so many aspects: geography, language, culture, tradition, studies, and academic achievement, to name a few. However, as you can understand, there are two broad kinds of challenges faced by international students in any country: academic and non-academic. 

Some academic challenges could be similar to those in one’s home country, such as assignments, assessments, competition, and pressure (from fellow students, professors, and even the university). Non-academic challenges for international students include language, culture, tradition, and homesickness. These can be especially stressful and even affect your academic performance. 

However, many universities these days have programs and counselors to help international students make a rapid and successful transition to the new environment. Additionally, you can seek out students and even professors with whom you share common interests and perspectives.

You could even be a part of a forum – physical or online – to share and discuss challenges. The Q&A forum we have here is one such space. Additionally, we also have a platform for researchers from all across the world to share their stories – of success, failure, personal disappointments, and rising from them. The platform is aptly called Researchers and Their Stories and fosters a great sense of empathy and inspiration. Here’s one story that we have picked out for you, a happy one about collaborating with international researchers: The fun challenges of international collaboration!

Finally, one quality that can help anyone, and not just students or researchers, and not just in academics but in life, is resilience: the ability to deal with and grow from adversity. Here is an excellent post from our site that explains what resilience means, how it helps, and how you can build it: 7 Secrets to help you build academic resilience.

Hope this helps. And all the best for your (international) studies!