From Albania to Zimbabwe, the College is home to students from all over the globe. As the newest class of Ephs finalize their decisions to call the Purple Valley home, the Record spoke to current international students about how they first discovered the College, and what ultimately led them to a liberal arts education.

Selice Jung ’29 is a first-year student from Seoul, South Korea. She said she learned about the College and the liberal arts approach to higher education from her math teacher during her first year of high school.

“I remember him saying that a lot of really great students go here, and he thought it would be a great fit for me,” she said. “I just dismissed it back then, but when I was applying to colleges, I decided to give it a shot.”

Jung grew up in one of the biggest cities in the world, so going to a college nestled between mountains and surrounded by farms was unconventional, even among other students from her high school who went abroad for their undergraduate studies. At her high school, most students were focused on attending big, research-focused universities in the United States.

Jung seriously considered attending a big research school, but eventually decided to go against the status quo. “When else would I have the chance to come study in a small town so full of nature?” she said.

David Kimani ’29, who goes by Kiiru, is from Nairobi, Kenya. After performing well on his senior-year final exams, he was selected for a program sponsored by a financial services company called Equity Group Holdings, which supports high-achieving students by providing them exposure to selective universities across the United States.

Through this program, Kimani attended an information session where he met an admissions officer from the College. After arriving on campus, Kimani said the same admissions officer remembered him.

Although Kimani applied to many different colleges, he was most drawn to liberal arts institutions, which he felt would allow him to pursue a wide range of interests rather than limiting himself to one field.

“I’m very interested in STEM, but I also make a lot of art and enjoy music and theater,” he said. “I wanted a place where I could do both.”

Kimani said that his decision to go abroad has transformed his life. “If someone had told me while I was in high school that I would be studying abroad, I wouldn’t have believed them,” he said.

Compared with his peers back home, Kimani’s choice to study abroad was not unusual. He described a divide between students who preferred to remain in Kenya and those who felt compelled to study abroad in pursuit of greater opportunities for postgraduate employment. “I’m somewhere in the middle,” Kimani said. “I just wanted to do what felt right for me.”

Moslima Hassani ’28 was born and raised in Bamyan, a central city in Afghanistan, situated between the Hindu Kush and the Koh-i-Baba mountain ranges.

“It’s known as one of the places where you can see the Milky Way at night when you go out because of low light pollution,” she said. Hassani recently declared her major in astrophysics.

Her education brought her stateside earlier than many international students. While she grew up in Afghanistan, she went to an American high school: Loomis-Chaffee, a boarding school in Windsor, Conn., starting in her sophomore year of high school.

But before attending high school in the United States, she went to a boarding middle school for girls in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan.

“It was a rare case,” Hassani said. “I feel like there are times that I don’t even remember what my life was like before middle school … it set the foundation for me as a person, and I met so many lifelong friends there.” Her experience going to middle school in Afghanistan’s biggest city exposed her to the world outside of her province, and allowed her to meet people from all walks of life.

“For the very first time, I was exposed to this very diverse community, because in my province, the majority of people are from the Hazara tribe,” she said.

There, she was able to meet some of her best friends, some of whom are at the College with her.

Hassani first learned about the College through an alum of the College, and she decided to visit during the summer before her senior year.

“I visited the physics department, the science quad, and I had a whole in-person experience,” she said. “And I was like, ‘Oh, I love this.’ I did a little more research, and that’s how I decided to apply.”

While Hassani’s international peers chose schools near metropolitan areas with large international airports with access to home, she chose the College for the opportunities it was able to provide, despite its remote location.

“Once I learned about all the research opportunities here and the physics and astronomy departments, I was like, ‘Oh, so I can achieve anything I want, even if I go to this small liberal arts college in the middle of nowhere?’” she said.