For the French and Spanish students, it's the North East Wales Institute. For the Chinese, it's Loughborough University. And for the Irish and Nigerians, it's the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen. Today Education Guardian exclusively reveals which UK universities are the hotspots for 20 different nationalities of overseas student.
Data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency reveals the universities with the largest communities of South Koreans, Greeks, Indians, Italians, Malaysians and others.
International students often cluster together at particular - unexpected - universities.
Why, for example, do almost 10% of all Spanish students in the UK go to the North East Wales Institute, which has just 7,300 students? Why are 510 of Robert Gordon University's 13,000 students from Nigeria? So many that Amina Deji-Loguleko, a Robert Gordon student from Nigeria, says back home Robert Gordon is jokingly referred to as the "other University of Ibadan [Nigeria's oldest university]".
Why is Nottingham such a hit with students from Hong Kong - 465 of whom are there out of 9,640 in the UK?
And the same could be asked of Oxford University for Canadians, the University of Westminster for Poles, Sheffield Hallam University for Malaysians, and the University of Greenwich for Indians.
Our data is from 2006-07 - the latest available - and is of undergraduates and postgraduates living and studying at universities in the UK. The students may be in any year of their courses.
We interviewed students from the hotspots and those who work in the international offices of universities to find out how these clusters have come about.
They turned up surprising answers. For Greek students, word has gone out that there are high-profile Greek professors at City University's business school, Cass. Panagota Pouri, a master's student at City who is from Athens, says this has helped make the university a Greek hotspot.
Dr Tim Westlake, Manchester University's director of student recruitment, admissions and international development, says the city of Manchester's brand and its football teams have played a big part in making the university attractive to Chinese students.
Yukino Kobayashi, an undergraduate at the University of the Arts, who is from Saitama in Japan, says the fact that the University of the Arts holds interviews for its courses in Osaka and Tokyo has encouraged nearly 9% of all Japanese students in the UK to go there: "If you say you are going to study in London, people in Japan assume it's at the University of the Arts."
For other hotspots, it's more a matter of historic links. The University of St Andrews has had links with North America since before 1759, when it awarded an honorary degree to Benjamin Franklin. Maybe golf has also got something to do with the fact that it is so popular with US students.
For others still, it's the links universities have forged with other institutions abroad. One of the main reasons Sheffield Hallam University is the hotspot for Malaysian students is its nine-year partnership with the Tunku Abdul Rahman College in Kuala Lumpur. The college's students come to Hallam for 14 weeks over the summer and top up their credits to gain a degree.
Felix Richter, from Germany, says he is at Anglia Ruskin University because his international business undergraduate degree from the Berlin school of economics involves two years at Anglia Ruskin.
The North East Wales Institute's links with Universidad de Zaragoza, Universitat de Cataluña and Universidad de Salamanca have helped bring in Spaniards.
Robert Gordon attracts Nigerians because it is "the oil capital of Europe", says Tahir Raji, an MBA student at Robert Gordon who is from Adamawa in Nigeria. The Nigerian oil industry means big business for graduates.
Most popular regions
Education Guardian also looked at which regions of the UK were the most popular for each of 20 nationalities.
London came top with 25% of the UK's 351,470 international students choosing to study there. Next was the south-east with 11% and Scotland with 10.6%. Northern Ireland came last with 1.5%.
Five years earlier, the top three regions were the same, but the West Midlands was in sixth place, whereas it now is fourth. The north-west has slipped from fourth to sixth place.
For each nationality, we calculated the three most popular regions of the UK, and compared this with the three most popular five years ago. We found Scotland had gone up hugely in overseas students' estimations.
Jenny Fernandes, chair of the Scottish Universities International Group, confirms that Scottish universities have increased their efforts to recruit internationally in the past few years. This is partly because Scotland has an ageing population and an increasingly smaller pool of school-leavers.
To compensate for this and encourage international students to settle there, it started the Fresh Talent initiative in 2005. This has allowed international students to stay and work in Scotland for two years after the end of their courses without needing a work permit. In the rest of the UK, international students can stay just one year. This summer, however, the playing field will be levelled and it will be two years for everyone.
But it would be wrong to assume that all nationalities would choose London, the south-east or Scotland above anywhere else in the UK. Around 15% of Malaysians choose to go to Yorkshire and the Humber, compared with 14% who go to London.
Lee Cheah Leong, 26, from Malaysia and studying for an Msc in international business and management at Sheffield Hallam, says: "I've been to London twice but I prefer Sheffield. The hectic life in London is not for me. The living cost is high and everything is expensive. I have some friends there and their rent alone is enough for my entire expenses for a month in Sheffield."
For some nationalities, however, being in London is seen as essential. A third of Pakistani students choose to be in the capital, and the figure is 38.5% for Italian students, 37.8% for Japanese and 43.2% for South Korean.
In terms of universities, the hotspots have changed in the last five years. More Chinese students used to go to the University of Central Lancashire than anywhere else, now Loughborough University is top.
Middlesex University bagged the hotspot for Indian students five years ago, but now it's been pushed out by Greenwich. Thames Valley University was top for Irish students and now it's Robert Gordon. Portsmouth was top for Greek students and now it's City University in London.
Other nationalities don't change as much. Oxford University is the hotspot for Canadian students, as it was five years ago. Nottingham has the most Thai students and did five years ago too.
For countries that have been incorporated into the European Union, there is a change. Polish students, whose numbers have gone up more than nine-fold in the past five years, used to go predominantly to the University of Westminster and to Oxbridge. Now the Poles' top three - in order - are Westminster, Bedfordshire and Coventry. It would seem that while previously Polish students were on postgraduate courses, now they are undergraduates.
Students becoming sophisticated
Professor Paul Wellings is the vice-chancellor of Lancaster University and chair of the international and European policy committee of the vice-chancellors' umbrella group, Universities UK. He says our hotspot data is encouraging. "It's good to have these hotspots. It tells you about the relationships universities have with countries. The alternative is mass recruitment, which works for a while, but may not be the most stable position."
Dominic Scott, chief executive of the UK Council for International Student Affairs, says: "It's good to see the diversity of choice and to know that students are becoming more sophisticated and learning that there are good institutions outside the golden triangle of Oxbridge and London."
But, hang on a minute. If international students can move from Portsmouth University to City University in five years, surely they can move on to the University of Stuttgart, too, in another five years.
"Whether they move on comes down to the quality of the sector, to the teaching being world-class and to the marketing and recruitment," says Wellings. "Yes, if we become complacent about our diversity, we might feel a cold breeze."
Top recruiters
The universities with the largest numbers of international students.
2006-07 (latest figures)
1. Manchester University 8345
2. Nottingham University 7710
3. Warwick University 7435
4. Oxford University 6555
5. City University 6380
6. Cambridge University 6340
7. University College London 6135
8. London School of Economics 5980
9. Westminster University 5735
10. Birmingham University 5505
Grand total of international students in all years (ie not just in their first year) at all universities in the UK and including undergraduates and postgraduates was 351,470.
2001-02
1. Middlesex University 5395
2. Cambridge University 5125
3. Birmingham University 4815
4. Oxford University 4735
5. London School of Economics 4640
6. Warwick University 4635
7. Nottingham University 4560
8. Leeds University 4430
9. Westminster University 4230
10. University College London 4040
Grand total of international students in all years (ie not just in their first year) at all universities in the UK and including undergraduates and postgraduates was 242,755.
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