Americans at St Andrews University: Dr Michael Boyle with Isabel Carty and Michael Hendrix, both fourth-year international relations students

For the French and Spanish students, it's the North East Wales Institute. For the Chinese, it's Loughborough University. And for the Irish and Nigerians, it's the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen. Today Education Guardian exclusively revealed which UK universities are the hotspots for 20 different nationalities of overseas student.

Data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency reveals the universities with the largest communities of South Koreans, Greeks, Indians, Italians, Malaysians and others.

International students often cluster together at particular - unexpected - universities.

Why, for example, do almost 10% of all Spanish students in the UK go to the North East Wales Institute, which has just 7,300 students? Why are 510 of Robert Gordon University's 13,000 students from Nigeria? So many that Amina Deji-Loguleko, a Robert Gordon student from Nigeria, says back home Robert Gordon is jokingly referred to as the "other University of Ibadan [Nigeria's oldest university]".

Why is Nottingham such a hit with students from Hong Kong - 465 of whom are there out of 9,640 in the UK?

And the same could be asked of Oxford University for Canadians, the University of Westminster for Poles, Sheffield Hallam University for Malaysians, and the University of Greenwich for Indians.

The data is from 2006-07 - the latest available - and is of undergraduates and postgraduates living and studying at universities in the UK. The students may be in any year of their courses.

The Guardian interviewed students from the hotspots and those who work in the international offices of universities to find out how these clusters have come about.

They turned up surprising answers. For Greek students, word has gone out that there are high-profile Greek professors at City University's business school, Cass. Panagota Pouri, a master's student at City who is from Athens, says this has helped make the university a Greek hotspot.

Dr Tim Westlake, Manchester University's director of student recruitment, admissions and international development, says the city of Manchester's brand and its football teams have played a big part in making the university attractive to Chinese students.

Yukino Kobayashi, an undergraduate at the University of the Arts, who is from Saitama in Japan, says the fact that the University of the Arts holds interviews for its courses in Osaka and Tokyo has encouraged nearly 9% of all Japanese students in the UK to go there: "If you say you are going to study in London, people in Japan assume it's at the University of the Arts."

For other hotspots, it's more a matter of historic links. The University of St Andrews has had links with North America since before 1759, when it awarded an honorary degree to Benjamin Franklin. Maybe golf has also got something to do with the fact that it is so popular with US students.

For others still, it's the links universities have forged with other institutions abroad. One of the main reasons Sheffield Hallam University is the hotspot for Malaysian students is its nine-year partnership with the Tunku Abdul Rahman College in Kuala Lumpur. The college's students come to Hallam for 14 weeks over the summer and top up their credits to gain a degree.

Felix Richter, from Germany, says he is at Anglia Ruskin University because his international business undergraduate degree from the Berlin school of economics involves two years at Anglia Ruskin.

The North East Wales Institute's links with Universidad de Zaragoza, Universitat de Cataluña and Universidad de Salamanca have helped bring in Spaniards.

Robert Gordon attracts Nigerians because it is "the oil capital of Europe", says Tahir Raji, an MBA student at Robert Gordon who is from Adamawa in Nigeria. The Nigerian oil industry means big business for graduates.