The Daily Princetonian (Princeton U.)

PRINCETON, N.J. (U-WIRE) – A Chinese student who gained international recognition as the first female winner of the Singapore Mathematical Olympiad and who was slated to start freshman year at Princeton University cannot enter the United States to study because her student visa application was rejected four times this summer by American officials in Beijing.

University administrators said Wu Jie’s visa applications were denied because consular officials in China believed Wu, who comes from a working-class family, would illegally stay in the U.S. after completing her education at Princeton.

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University Vice President for Public Affairs Bob Durkee ’69 said he has been in close contact with officials at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and said Sen. Jon Corzine, D-NJ, and Rep. Rush Holt, D-NJ, have written letters on Wu’s behalf.

Durkee said Wu might have complicated her situation by allegedly giving consular officials the impression during the first of four application meetings that she had no intention of returning to China.

“She presented a very compelling case that she would not return to China. I don’t think it was her intention to present that case,” Durkee said, referring to his conversations with officials at the U.S. Embassy. He added that Princeton alumni in Beijing coached her for her last two meetings, but that the damage to her case had already been done.

In her letters to the Princeton Club in Beijing, Wu maintained that she presented enough evidence of her ties to her home country to show she would return and said officials spent too little time reviewing her case.

“The onus is on the individual applicant to prove to the satisfaction of a consular official that the applicant will return,” said Kelly Shannon, a spokeswoman at the State Department. Familial ties can assist in obtaining a visa, she said, but cannot guarantee that a person will not emigrate.

Durkee speculated that Wu’s working-class roots made her application something of an uphill battle.

“Had she come from a family where there was property or wealth, that might have helped,” Durkee said.

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Wu, 20, who spent six years studying at Hwa Chong Junior College in Singapore, could not yet be reached to comment for this story, but in an email to Princeton alumni in Beijing, she wrote about the ordeal:”To watch my Princeton dream burst like a soap bubble … of course, the system is unfair. But at that fateful moment, I was too numb to feel the indignation,” she wrote.

The rejections leave Wu in an international education limbo. Knowing she would prefer to attend an elite school outside of China, Wu never took the tests required to matriculate in China’s university system. She applied instead to Yale University, the University of Cambridge, Cornell University, the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton, and turned down offers from all except Old Nassau.

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the United States has reduced the number of student visas issued, from 226,465 between October 1999 and August 2000 to 174,479 between the same period in 2002-2003, according to figures provided by the U.S. State Department.

Princeton president Shirley Tilghman said Wu’s situation is part of that clamping down. In addition to Wu, three graduate students, including two from China and one from Russia, have not been issued visas, though their applications are still under review.

“As you know, this is a problem affecting many foreign students throughout the country,” Tilghman wrote in an email. “It is especially difficult for students from Russia, China and the Middle East. What is a little surprising about this case is that it involves an undergraduate. Most of the cases involve graduate students who are concentrating in the sciences.”

Durkee said Wu’s acceptance to Princeton has been deferred.

“She can come next year if she can get a visa,” he said.

In the meantime, Wu plans on taking an extra year of high school in Singapore before reapplying for a visa next year.