In this paper, I address the issues of rural disadvantage in accessing higher education. Taking an autoethnographic approach and building on research on rural education, which has shown that geography is an important stratifier of educational outcomes, I reflect on the factors that helped me to access higher education despite my rural background in Kazakhstan. I argue that the role of students’ social capital in accessing higher education is critical.

As more universities internationalize, interest in engagement between international and domestic students has increased. University initiatives to bring students together often adopt a deficit approach dependent on international students’ “adjustment” to the host culture, overlooking the need for adjustment to be a two-way exchange and the role of the institution in this process. Focusing on educational group work as a salient site of cross-national interaction, this study draws on focus group data to explore how institutional habitus, or unwritten rules, are enacted at a large U.S. university. Findings indicated that domestic students were better socialized to understand the habitus of the institution and thus tend to take charge in group work. In contrast, international students were seen as linguistically and academically deficient and are relegated to passive roles in a group. Important implications for practitioners and scholars of U.S. higher education are discussed.

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