“Without polling all of the students, my operating assumption is it is logistically easier and financially less burdensome for residents of Michigan and residents of the U.S. to get home, compared to the logistical and financial struggles international students face in returning home,” Riedinger said.

Although the Office of the Registrar end-term reports showed international students to make up about 10.8 percent of the student population on campus in summer 2011, compared to 12.3 percent in spring 2012, Associate Registrar for Technology Kristin Schuette said the data on the registrar’s end-term report does not specify the number of domestic students who enroll in courses online versus international students.

Jin said most of the students she sees around campus and in her classes are not domestic.

“I haven’t seen a lot of American students around campus, to be honest,” she said. “Most students are Chinese, Korean or Japanese.”

Jin said she expects many international students have chosen to take WRA courses in the summer because the courses are a bit smaller, and they are able to get more help from professors in perfecting their English skills. Considering a majority of her classmates also use English as a second language, she feels there are more chances to improve her English, Jin said. Courses such as statistics are much easier for her because she already took them in high school, so taking them in the summer is preferred because they are shorter, she said.

“For other courses like economics and writing, rhetoric and American cultures or accounting, it is a little bit harder because it is not taught in your native language,” Jin said. “So the question is not if you understand what the course is talking about.”

Actuarial science sophomore Jiajing Chen also said she has noticed she no longer is the minority in some of her courses; in her accounting class of about 30 students, she said about two-thirds of them are Chinese international students.

Chen is using the summer to get caught up on courses she was not able to take during other academic years.

“When I came the first year, there was a placement test I had to take because I am an international student; I passed half of it, so only half of my credits could be academic and the other half of my courses were (English as a Second Language) credits,” she said. “I have to take extra credits this summer to graduate on time.”