Supports for international graduate students

Thursday, October 28, 2021

Supports for international graduate students 

International graduate students at the University of Waterloo play critical roles in advancing the University’s goals to align our research strengths with important global challenges and connecting imagination with impact for a better world.  

In return, Waterloo takes seriously its duty to create a supportive environment for living, learning, working and discovery, worthy of the talented students joining us from all across the globe. 

The University also takes seriously its responsibilities to engage in important conversations with students. The goals of this dialog are for the community to be aware of the resources that exist to support our students, and to learn where there are perceived gaps that should be addressed. To these ends, we have collected facts to highlight our continued commitment.  Through this communication, we identify the pathways through which students can (and should) continue to interact with the University in advancing our common interests.

International graduate students at Waterloo by the numbers

The University of Waterloo is thrilled to be the University of choice for 2,347 international students — accounting for 36 per cent of all enrolled master’s and doctoral students (6,467).

International students are an integral part of our University, as they enrich our classrooms and research labs with global perspectives and viewpoints – thereby allowing for a more fulsome experience for all our University community. 

In fall 2021, the University of Waterloo received 8,500 applications from international graduate students and made offers to over 1,800 students. The number of applications received from students from all parts of the world has been on a steady increase.

This growth speaks to Waterloo’s hard-earned reputation for providing international graduate students with ongoing resources to ensure opportunities for their students to achieve their goals – both academically and personally.

How Waterloo maintains financial transparency

The University’s finances, including student funding, are complex. We have an operating budget of nearly $800 million, with the largest share of revenues coming from student tuition and what are known as “grants” in the form of financial support received from the Province of Ontario.

The province only provides grants to students who are Canadian citizens or who have permanent residency. The University receives no support from the province for international graduate students. In fact, there is a charge to the University for each International undergraduate and master’s student pursuing their scholarship at the University.It’s important to note that for domestic PhD students, the provincial grant is close to four times as much as the student’s tuition. Because the University receives no grant for international students, we (and all of our Ontario peer institutions) establish a different rate of tuition paid by international students.

We are acutely aware of how important international students are to the Ontario and Canadian economies upon graduation. As such, Waterloo and peer institutions regularly lobby our governments to reconsider their policies regarding international students. We will continue this advocacy. 

The University recognizes the financial challenges graduate tuition poses for our international students. To ensure our international graduate students are successful in their lives and research, the University takes several steps to ensure that our prospective international students have the information they need to assess their ability to study and to complete their degrees at Waterloo.

The University of Waterloo is transparent with tuition fees and charges. Students who receive an offer from Waterloo know at the time of their decision what their expected costs will be to study with us. 

To provide our international students cost certainty for their education, the University limits year-over-year increases for our returning students.

Financial support for international graduate students at Waterloo

Furthermore, the University has in place several funding initiatives to support international graduate students, as identified below.

  • International Doctoral Student Award (IDSA): This program offsets the tuition differential for international PhD students, providing the same tuition payment value as domestic students. Annually, the University allocates approximately $10 million to the award; in the 2020/2021 timeframe, $10,258,065 was disbursed to 2,262 doctoral students.  
  • International Master’s Award of Excellence) (IMAE): This program partially offsets the tuition differential for excellent international master’s students; the annual value expanded on this program was $1,315,000 in the 2020/2021 year; with 524 students receiving support.   
  • Graduate Student Contingency Bursary: These are available exclusively to international graduate students who have experienced financial challenges that could not have been predicted that are precluding our students from completing their program; $580,450 was given out in 2020/2021 to 181 students. 

Graduate Teaching Assistants (TAs) play an essential role in supporting the University’s teaching mission. During the COVID-19 pandemic, TAs have played a vital role supporting courses remotely and in-person (where available) — and continue to do so. 

During the 2020/2021-year, graduate TA support totaled $22,692,070 with 40 per cent (approximately $9M) of the funding supporting international TAs. Many international TAs were able to be engage remotely, or had the opportunity to support the research enterprise of the University in other ways including a research assistantship or a research studentship (totaling close to $27m in support). 

Last year alone, graduate students at the University of Waterloo received overall funding support of approximately $127m; of that, $61m, or approximately 48 per cent supported our international graduate students. 

International student support at Waterloo during COVID-19

Since November 2020 – when Canadian immigration allowed for a return of international students into Canada, 3038 international students arrived at University of Waterloo.  Of those students, more than a third (1,265) participated in the University-provided quarantine package.  837 students have also attended pre-departure drop-in sessions and 360 were involved in Warrior Support Groups

During the pandemic, while we have seen ongoing changes related to immigration and travel detail, our international students have had ongoing support from the Student Success Office, and have been engaging through some of these services:

As a University, we have rallied to provide the most exceptional experience we can, given the circumstances of COVID-19 – and will continue to do so.  We continue expanding the breadth of our cultural diversity through the ongoing dialogue with our campus partners to support all our students – including those coming to Waterloo from all parts of the world.

Facilitating communications between graduate students and the University

We know things aren’t perfect.  There are both unique circumstances and ongoing challenges to be addressed.  It’s important for students to be aware of the pathways that exist.  Key people / groups / pathways for resolving immediate issues and continuously improving graduate studies:

If you have questions as an international student, contact us.