• Harvard University is battling the Trump administration in court to enroll international students.
• The State Department has also halted new student visa appointments, thus adding to the uncertainty.
• Universities overseas have moved to encourage Harvard applicants to study with them instead.

Universities around the world are giving "unconditional offers" — and touting how close tropical getaways are — in a bid to draw Harvard-bound international students grappling with President Donald Trump's crackdown on the Ivy League institution.

The Trump administration said on May 22 that it was banning Harvard from taking in international students. Secretary of State Marco Rubio later ordered all US embassies around the world to halt new student visa appointments while the State Department expands the screening and vetting of applicants' social media. The university's international students are continuing with their studies while the case continues to play out, thanks to a court order.

But amid the uncertainty, other universities overseas have moved quickly to welcome US-bound international students to their classrooms.

Last month, Germany's culture minister, Wolfram Weimer, told Bloomberg that Harvard can set up an "exile campus" in Germany, where students at American universities would be "more than welcome."

Harvard did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

The National University of Singapore is extending application deadlines for its MBA program

The National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School said on May 29 that it was offering a "limited extension" to the application deadlines for its MBA and master's programs.

"Official American government policies continue to generate uncertainty and discomfort about student visas. At NUS Business School, we understand and sympathize with these worries," it said in a statement issued Thursday.

"If you have received a verifiable offer from a top-20 MSc or MBA programme but are now reconsidering your plans, we welcome you to instead join us at the National University of Singapore," it added.

Besides selling itself as "Asia's leading business school," NUS also touted how close Singapore is to vacation destinations, adding that the city "happens to be a short plane trip from Bali and Phuket."

The business school said the application deadlines for programs starting in August 2025 and January 2026 had been extended to June 22 and June 30, respectively. The original deadline for NUS's full-time MBA program, which starts in August, was April 2.

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology has said it will give 'unconditional offers' to Harvard-bound students

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, or HKUST, said on May 23 that it was extending an "open invitation" to Harvard's international undergraduate and postgraduate students to continue their studies there.

HKUST said the offer also applied to "those holding confirmed offers for Harvard degree programs."

"The university will provide unconditional offers, streamlined admission procedures, and academic support to facilitate a seamless transition for interested students," HKUST added.

When approached for comment, HKUST told BI on Tuesday that it was "opening its academic resources to affected international students (including Harvard University students) in response to recent US policy changes."

"Our invitation extends beyond Harvard-affiliated students, but to all outstanding students, both local and international — facing similar academic disruptions," HKUST added in its statement to BI.

The university said it maintains "robust transfer policies" and will be expediting admission reviews and streamlining credit transfers for qualified candidates.

HKUST said it has received "tens of inquiries " and a "wide range of questions" from affected students since their announcement.

The University of Tokyo said it would accept Harvard students on a temporary basis

The University of Tokyo said on May 26 that it was considering accepting international students from Harvard on a temporary basis.

The university's executive vice president for diversity and global affairs, Kaori Hayashi, told BI the university had previously accepted about 20 students from Ukraine who fled the country after Russia's invasion in 2022.

"Given the current unstable international situation, we wish to draw on our experience from the Ukraine crisis to assist talented students whose studies have been disrupted by external factors, whether or not their home institution is Harvard University," Hayashi added.

But students accepted under this program "will not be enrolled as regular degree-seeking students," said Hayashi. Instead, they will be given "temporary learning opportunities" and allowed to "take certain classes" at the university," she said.

"We also plan to issue academic transcripts so that credits for courses taken at UTokyo can be recognized when they return to their studies or pursue further education in the future," Hayashi added.

She added that the start date and duration of the program were still being worked out, but would be ready in the coming academic year.

• Three teenagers in New York designed a cardboard, called Kiriboard, to replace plastic packaging.
• They got the idea when a box of motors for their robotics hobby arrived damaged.
• Their invention won the $12,500 Earth Prize. Now they plan to buy a machine to make more Kiriboards.

Three teenage boys in New York City have invented a clever packaging material that they hope will replace toxic plastics and make plastic-free shipping a reality.

Zhi Han (Anthony) Yao, Flint Mueller, and James Clare are planning to pursue a patent and eventually pitch their product to Home Depot, as well as traditional shippers like Amazon, FedEx, and the US Postal Service.

They call their geometric, cardboard invention Kiriboard, since it's inspired by Japanese kirigami, which is the art of cutting and folding paper.

"Something like this is the wave of the future," Jerry Citron, the teenagers' environmental-science teacher, told Business Insider.

Yao, Mueller, and Clare won the Earth Prize on April 8, making them one of seven winning environmental projects by teenagers across the globe. The award comes with $12,500, which they plan to use to buy a cutting machine, called a CNC router, and test more prototypes.

Plastic-free shipping could change the world

Just like any plastic, Styrofoam and other plastic packaging can shed microscopic bits of plastic into homes and the environment.

Microplastics have been detected from the oceans to the top of Mount Everest, in animals' and humans' body tissues and blood, and even in rain all over the planet. They're associated with heart attack and stroke risk. Some researchers suspect they could even be contributing to the recent rise in colon cancers in young people.

"I didn't realize it was as big of an issue as it was," Yao told BI. "I mean, companies have made sustainable initiatives and greener initiatives, but they haven't really fully replaced plastic packaging."

Enter the Kiriboard: Kiriboard is cut into lattice-like shapes so that it can bend to fill the space between an item and the wall of its box. The cuts give the cardboard a three-dimensional structure that makes it sturdy and allows it to bend and absorb impact, protecting what's inside, similar to bubble wrap but without the plastic.

Once perfected, the three teens hope their design can help ship packages of sensitive or heavy equipment even more securely, at a competitive price.

Broken motors and crumple zones

Clare, Mueller, and Yao are all on the same robotics team at Stuyvesant High School in New York City. Clare is a junior, and Mueller and Yao are seniors.

The idea for Kiriboard started when they opened a shipment of Kraken X60 motors, which are about $200 a pop. They found that the brass pins, which connect the motors to a robot, were damaged and unusable. They assumed the pins had been damaged in transit.

"We're like, well, we should do something about this packaging, because clearly the packaging wasn't good enough," Mueller said.

Clare thought about how cars are engineered with crumple zones, meant to absorb the energy of impacts to protect the people inside.

Similarly, he said, "you can make strategic weak points in your packaging so that the package warps and deforms," sparing the package's contents.

With help from the Earth Prize program and Citron, they built and tested their first Kiriboard prototypes.

The matrix

It was a scrappy effort, with cardboard scavenged from their school.

After some research and consulting various teachers, Yao said they drew up eight or nine different designs, and narrowed down to four to build and test. Then, came the fun part: dropping heavy stuff on their creations.

To test their prototypes' durability, the teens slammed them with a roll of tape, a stapler, a can of soda, and a metal water bottle — "which did the most damage, but not as much as we thought it would," Clare said.

They dropped each item onto the Kiriboard prototypes from various heights, so that they could calculate and study the physical forces of each impact.

"Basically, we want to see what's the most amount of force it can take before it snaps," Yao said.

The results were promising, the trio said. The Kiriboard prototypes sustained very little damage, which they judged by checking the cardboard for dents. They plan to move forward with all four designs, which they hope will be useful for different types of shipping.

In the design pictured above, four triangular "legs" hold the Kiriboard in place inside a box.

"This middle section, we call it the matrix. This is supposed to be flexible," Yao said. Once you place an item for shipping inside the box, the matrix "is supposed to form to the product."

Once they've purchased a CNC router to automate cutting the cardboard, they plan to test prototypes by actually shipping them in boxes.

"Right now, we want to perfect our product," Yao said.

When it's ready, they said they might also pitch it to the electronics company AndyMark, which shipped them the robotic motors that arrived broken.

"No shade to them," Clare said, adding that their robotics team frequently orders from AndyMark with no problems.

"We're on the brink of, like, this could become a reality, and it's just up to us to put in that final effort," Mueller said. Clare chimed in: "All from a broken package."