Admitted, Then Denied: The Growing Isolation Of Iranian Students

Last summer, I sat in my makeshift dining-room office in California, looking across a Zoom screen at Kiarash Nakhaei, a young Iranian man in Tehran.

Kiarash and I had spent months working together on a 114-page analysis of MBA careers. He was preparing to leave Iran and attend MIT’s Global SCALE Network master’s program abroad.

On his side of the screen, it was the middle of the night. Through the window behind him, I watched bombs fall on the city.

He had earned his place in a graduate program. What he did not know was whether he would be able to leave Iran to attend it.

“Are you safe?” I asked. Then, almost by reflex, I added, “Why are you still there? Aren’t you afraid?”

“I’m not afraid. I will go if I can. If I can’t, I’ll stay here in Tehran,” he said.

Then he tried to explain what it felt like to be young and ambitious in a country whose borders, politics and conflicts continually circumscribed the choices available to him.

“It’s like someone is holding you against your will, preparing to do you harm. If someone comes to help, you say, ‘Take the shot.’ We are tired of being trapped.”

He eventually made it out.

AMERICA ONCE SAW IRANIAN STUDENTS VERY DIFFERENTLY

A little more than a year later, Kiarash and I caught up again. This time there were no bombs outside his window. He had completed his program and was living in Luxembourg.

And he had noticed something remarkable. For a country of fewer than 700,000 people, Luxembourg had attracted a surprisingly substantial community of Iranian students and researchers. He estimated that roughly 2,500 Iranians now live there and that perhaps 400 are current or former students. Those figures are difficult to independently verify at that level of specificity, but the community is visible enough that the University of Luxembourg has an official Iranian Student Association. The university has described its Iranian students as its largest international student community associated with a single country. Elsewhere, the doors available to Iranian students seem to be closing.

There is historical irony here. In the 1970s, Harvard Business School played an important role in the creation of the Iran Center for Management Studies (ICMS) in Tehran. Established in 1971 as an independent institution, ICMS was modeled on the HBS curriculum and drew heavily on Harvard faculty. Its purpose was to educate a new generation of managers and institutional leaders.

Iran was also once the single largest source of international students in the United States.

In the 1979-1980 academic year, more than 50,000 Iranian students studied at American universities, accounting for approximately 18% of all international students in the country at the time. No other nation sent more. After the Islamic Revolution, however, the bridge collapsed and Iranian enrollment bottomed out at roughly 1,800 students by the early 2000s.

The pipeline eventually began rebuilding, and by 2024, the number of Iranian students studying in the United States was up 15% from the previous year.

That recovery now faces yet another reversal.

Effective January 1, 2026, the U.S. government suspended visa issuance to Iranian nationals across immigrant and nonimmigrant categories, subject to limited exceptions. For a prospective Iranian MBA, master’s, or PhD student who does not qualify for an exception, an admission from Harvard, MIT, Stanford or any other American university is therefore not enough.

My former research partner knows that distinction personally. Despite being admitted to a program that required time at MIT, his U.S. visa application was refused.

Now, for students still inside Iran, the barrier can arise before an application is even submitted.

Just days ago, Educational Testing Service paused TOEFL and GRE testing inside Iran after the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control suspended the sanctions authorization that had allowed those educational testing services to operate there. ETS says Iranian nationals may still take its tests outside Iran, but that requires the money, ability and permission to leave the country just to sit for the admissions exam.

THE DOORS ARE NARROWING ELSEWHERE, TOO

The United States is not the only difficult destination. Germany’s embassy in Tehran is operating at severely limited capacity. New student visa waiting lists reopened in July, but German authorities say there is still no established timetable for appointments for many applicants, including students hoping to begin in the 2026–2027 winter semester.

Norway presents another paradox. As of August 25, Norway’s immigration authority had approved just six Iranian student applications in 2026 and rejected 36, an approval rate of approximately 14%, compared with 94% in 2024. The principal concern cited in reporting on the decisions is not academic qualification but the “return condition.” In other words, whether authorities believe an applicant is likely to leave Norway when the study permit expires.

At the same time, Norwegian authorities have temporarily suspended forced returns to Iran because conditions there are considered too uncertain.

The result is a policy contradiction. Instability in Iran can make it too dangerous to send an Iranian back, while simultaneously making a prospective student less likely to receive permission to enter because authorities fear that same instability may prevent the student from returning home.

Canada has no government office in Iran, adding another layer of geography and complexity to already difficult immigration and consular processes.

For highly qualified Iranian students, then, admission is an increasingly high first hurdle. They must navigate sanctions, embassy closures or restrictions, long waiting lists, international travel for testing or visa processing, currency depreciation and an internet environment that can make the application process itself difficult.

THEN THERE IS LUXEMBOURG

For now, Luxembourg offers an intriguing counterexample. Its immigration system still requires students from non-EU countries to meet the usual conditions: university admission, financial resources, health insurance, authorization to stay and, where required, a Type D visa. This is not an open-border policy, but Iranian students are getting there.

My former research partner described classmates and friends who had attended some of Iran’s strongest universities and accumulated impressive academic records, only to discover that the traditional destinations for graduate education were becoming inaccessible.

One close friend, he told me, had been admitted to a prestigious U.S. university for a PhD in telecommunications but could not obtain a visa. He instead went to Luxembourg, where he is now completing his doctorate and continuing a research record that includes papers published in highly regarded journals.

“Luxembourg is benefiting from this situation,” he told me.

Perhaps that is the more useful way to think about what is happening. There’s the humanitarian question, but there’s also the human capital question.

WHO GETS THE SCIENTISTS, FOUNDERS AND LEADERS?

Iran has long produced an unusually educated population. Among Iranian immigrants working in the United States, 62% are employed in management, business, science and arts occupations, compared with 41% of U.S.-born workers and 35% of immigrants overall.

Those numbers should still matter to business schools.

The global competition for talent begins much earlier than admissions – the moment a prospect starts dreaming of something more, choosing where to study, where to build (read: invest) and, now more commonly, researching which country will allow them through the door.

For decades, American higher education was one of the country’s most powerful mechanisms for attracting precisely these degree seekers. International students do not merely fill classrooms.

Just two years ago, nearly 1.18 million international students studied at U.S. institutions. NAFSA: Association of International Educators reports that international students contributed nearly $55 billion to the American economy in 2024, and estimates they supported more than 355,000 U.S. jobs. But the longer-term contribution is harder to capture in a single economic statistic. These students become researchers, founders, professors, executives and bridges between countries. Some stay. Some return home. Some build careers spanning both worlds.

The Iranian case deserves attention from business schools in particular.

Business education describes itself as a training ground for people who can navigate ambiguity, build institutions, allocate capital and lead through complexity. Few populations of prospective students understand complexity more intimately than young Iranians trying to build globally connected lives while living under sanctions, political repression, economic instability and war.

The question is not whether every Iranian applicant is a dissident, a future democrat or a social entrepreneur. They aren’t, and romanticizing an entire nationality would be its own mistake.

The question is whether nationality and geopolitics are becoming such powerful filters that institutions never get the opportunity to evaluate the individual at all.

WHAT BUSINESS SCHOOLS CAN STILL DO

Universities cannot issue visas or rewrite sanctions policy. But they are not powerless.

Schools can preserve remote admissions advising and educational access where legally permitted. They can expand scholarships for students facing extraordinary mobility barriers. Alumni can provide mentorship, test preparation and application guidance. Universities can work collectively with governments to document where immigration and sanctions policies produce unintended consequences for legitimate academic exchange.

And business schools can pay attention to where the talent goes when their own countries close the door.

Luxembourg already has. Its Iranian student community is not enormous in absolute terms. In a nation this small, however, its visibility is notable. The University of Luxembourg maintains an Iranian Student Association whose stated mission includes helping new Iranian students integrate into the country. Years before the current crisis, the university publicly expressed solidarity with Iranian students and academics and called on European authorities to provide refuge to people whose lives were endangered.

There is an economic argument underneath the moral one.

A country that admits a gifted Iranian researcher whom an American university wanted but America could not receive has not merely helped a student. It has acquired talent.

Multiply that decision across engineers, scientists, entrepreneurs, economists and researchers, and immigration policy begins to look remarkably like industrial policy.

THE TALENT IS READY, BUT TRAPPED

Somewhere in Iran, a young woman is studying English or preparing an application while war, sanctions and internet restrictions intrude on the ordinary business of imagining a future.

Until recently, she might have taken the GRE in Tehran and dreamed of MIT, Wharton or Stanford.

Today, she will have to leave Iran simply to take the exam, if permitted to do so. Even if an American university admits her, current U.S. policy may prevent her from receiving the visa required to attend. Germany may mean a waiting list. But somewhere else, perhaps Luxembourg, says yes.

The great irony is that the West often talks about Iran almost entirely through the vocabulary of nuclear enrichment, sanctions, missiles and regime change.

But Iran is also its students, entrepreneurs, engineers, innovators, artists, researchers and leaders-in-waiting. The countries that understand that may be making one of the smartest talent investments of the next generation.

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Heather W. Soderquist is the former Chief Operating Officer of Poets&Quants. She consults with global business schools at BlueSky Education and serves MBA applicants worldwide as an independent admissions coach.

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