While around 1000 undergraduates at Harvard are international, the total number of international students at Harvard is much higher:
https://oneworld.worldwide.harvard.edu/i...t-harvard/
Back to undergraduates...my son just applied to college this past fall, and every school had a "commit" date of May 1 for high school seniors. Most schools have worked through their waitlists by now. I know that the transfer commit date is June 1 for the University of California system, June 2 for Stanford, and I don't know that those schools have a waitlist for transfers. In any case, I doubt that there is room at AAU-type schools for undergraduate international students from Harvard.
There is always a study abroad option as a temporary fix for undergrads, but that is limited to 5 months. Still, that would buy some time for a resolution one way or the other between Harvard and the Feds.
As for graduate/professional students, who make up the bulk of Harvard's international students... I'm not sure that there is a workaround. I suppose Harvard could offer courses hybrid online/in-person for some programs, but so many graduate/professional programs require in-person learning because of the research/training component. But then again, maybe the cuts in research funding would be an excuse for Harvard to "not" have so many international graduate/professional students.
Here's a recent op-ed from the Harvard Crimson about the need for Harvard to open an international (i.e. not located physically in the US) campus:
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/...-campuses/
https://oneworld.worldwide.harvard.edu/i...t-harvard/
Back to undergraduates...my son just applied to college this past fall, and every school had a "commit" date of May 1 for high school seniors. Most schools have worked through their waitlists by now. I know that the transfer commit date is June 1 for the University of California system, June 2 for Stanford, and I don't know that those schools have a waitlist for transfers. In any case, I doubt that there is room at AAU-type schools for undergraduate international students from Harvard.
There is always a study abroad option as a temporary fix for undergrads, but that is limited to 5 months. Still, that would buy some time for a resolution one way or the other between Harvard and the Feds.
As for graduate/professional students, who make up the bulk of Harvard's international students... I'm not sure that there is a workaround. I suppose Harvard could offer courses hybrid online/in-person for some programs, but so many graduate/professional programs require in-person learning because of the research/training component. But then again, maybe the cuts in research funding would be an excuse for Harvard to "not" have so many international graduate/professional students.
Here's a recent op-ed from the Harvard Crimson about the need for Harvard to open an international (i.e. not located physically in the US) campus:
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/...-campuses/
If there's one thing people have learned in Berkeley, it's that you can't put "Cal football" and "Rose Bowl" in the same sentence. The words just don't fit. You'd be better off linking "covered wagons" with "Mars travel." (Bruce Jenkins, Cal '70, SF Chronicle, Nov. 11, 2017)