In GMAC Research’s annual Forward-Looking Review webinar in January, we discussed how an important trend we’d be continuing to watch closely in 2018 is international student mobility, which in 2017 saw significant shifts that impacted many programs’ overall application volumes. A new data brief from GMAC Research, published on gmac.com this week, shows that halfway through the current admissions cycle many U.S. business school programs are continuing to see declining interest from international candidates.

Overall, 48 percent of U.S. programs report that they have received fewer international applications compared with the same point last year. Meanwhile, increasing number of international candidates are now applying to programs in Europe and Asia-Pacific, where more programs report growth in international applications than declines.

This mid-cycle snapshot comes courtesy of the 2018 Preliminary Application Trends Survey, which collected application data from programs approximately halfway through the current admissions cycle in February. In total, the survey collected responses from 767 graduate business programs around the world, including 307 U.S. MBA programs and 284 U.S. business master’s programs.

The new data brief combines data from the new Preliminary Application Trends Survey with GMAT score sending data and data from ongoing monthly survey pulses of prospective students to give business school professionals an up-to-date assessment of the state of international student mobility.