The purpose of this research was to explore the relationship between life difficulties of international students at a Southeastern university in the USA and the self-concept of these students. The findings indicate that international students experience minor to moderate difficulty in studying in the United States. The current study also indicates that, overall, international students at the University returned significantly greater scores than the norm group on dimensions of self-concept for three of the five self-concept scales: Aspiration, Academic Interest and Satisfaction, and Leadership and Initiative. There was no significant difference on the other two dimensions: Identification vs. Alienation and Anxiety. Only one self-concept scale was correlated to the difficulty variables. The Leadership and Initiative self-concept scale appeared to be negatively related to Academic Hardship and Relationship Difficulty. (Contains 2 tables.)