David Weeks, co-founder and chief operating officer of Sunrise International, a firm that advises overseas universities on recruiting Chinese students, said that the increase was a “meaningful signal for Harvard and to a slightly lesser extent for US higher education”.

Elite US brands still have a strong gravitational pull, especially in China, Weeks said. “Many will apply to third-country options as hedges, but if they land their US ‘reach’ school, they often still take it because the perceived long-term credential value is hard to match.”

Weeks added that Chinese students’ risk tolerance is higher than many observers assume.

“Overall Chinese enrolment in the US is down from its 2019 peak, but that decline likely reflects the more risk-averse segment of Chinese students shifting to alternatives … Many Chinese families have lived through prior US–China ‘lurch cycles’ like the 2018 trade war, so they evaluate shocks differently compared to markets like India,” he said.

Harvard saw a slight increase in overall foreign student enrolment compared with the autumn of 2024. The proportion of international students at Harvard in the autumn of 2025 rose slightly to 28.1 per cent, or 6,836 students – a roughly 1 per cent increase reflecting a gain of 43 foreign students.

While small, it is a change that goes against national trends. Foreign enrolment at US universities overall declined by about 1 per cent over a comparable period, while new foreign student enrolment fell by 17 per cent, according to partial data from the Institute of International Education’s Open Doors report, which is sponsored by the State Department.

The second Trump administration has taken numerous steps to restrict international students, including new social media vetting procedures during visa processing, travel bans, threats to deport foreigners for expressing political speech and proposals to change the H-1B programme – a key work visa often used by international graduates.

On Monday, the State Department said it had revoked more than 100,000 visas since Trump took office last January, among them about 8,000 student visas.