More about Houston.
In 1836, brothers Augustus and John Allen from New York navigated up the Buffalo Bayou from the Gulf of Mexico. They found an ideal spot for a new city. And Houston was born.
From 1836 to the 1970s Houston doubled in size almost every decade. Today 4.8 million people make Houston the fourth largest city in the United States. The city covers 617 square miles. Houstonians speak 90 languages.
With a GDP of over $215 billion a year, Houston's economy is larger than Hong Kong's. Houston's economy is built on the back of the energy industry. Other prominent industries include the space industry (Houston is home for N.A.S.A., the National Aeronautical and Space Administration), trade (the port of Houston is America's second largest), and medicine (the Texas Medical Center is the largest in the world, employing 55,000 people and treating 70,000 patients each day).
For more information about Houston, see
http://www.houston-spacecityusa.com/
http://www.houstonchronicle.com/
http://www.click2houston.com/.
Houston's international students
Last year Houston hosted 10,426 international students. New York City, though, ranked as the largest host city to international students, with 36,086 total. The Los Angeles area ranked second (29,486), followed by Boston (24,160), Washington DC (20,678), Chicago (17,319), Philadelphia (11,373), San Jose (11,070), Houston (10,526), Dallas (10,199), and San Francisco (8,393). With 45,672 international students, Texas ranks third in the nation behind California (80,487) and New York (63,773).
Nationally, India is the leading place of origin for international students (74,603, up 12%), followed by #2 China (64,757, up 2%), #3 Korea (51,519, up 5%), #4 Japan (45,960, down 2%), #5 Taiwan (28,017, down 3%), #6 Canada (26,513, unchanged), #7 Mexico (12,801, up 2%), #8 Turkey (11,601, down 4%), #9 Indonesia (10,432, down 10%), #10 Thailand (9,982, down 14%), #11 Germany (9,302, down 3%), #12 Brazil (8,388, down 7%), #13 UK (8,326, down 1%), #14 Pakistan (8,123, down 6%), and #15 Hong Kong (8,076, up 4%).
Additional statistics can be found at http://opendoors.iienetwork.org/.