Dining Together: Social Networks With International and Domestic Students as Predictors of International Students’ College Success

Prior research has explored how international students’ interactions with domestic students and with other international students predict their self-reported short-term outcomes, particularly in the context of the environmental challenges that international students may encounter. The present study builds upon this earlier work by using institutional data from dining hall meal swipe cards to measure interpersonal relationships and examine how these meal-indices from the first semester predict international students’ subsequent credits earned, grades, retention, and graduation. Within a sample of 1,634 first-year international students, the results indicate that social networks with international students and with domestic students both predict postsecondary success outcomes; the findings are even significant when based on dining hall data measured at the end of students’ first week of classes. The patterns vary somewhat across outcomes: meal-indices with both groups of students consistently predict international students’ chances of graduation, relationships with international students are more consistently related to retention, and relationships with domestic students are more often associated with college GPA and credits earned.