Qualitative studies from a range of nations suggest that students studying in their own country exhibit a range of responses towards the international students with whom they share social and academic spaces, although the tendency is towards passive avoidance. Little work has yet been focused on understanding why students in similar situations react differently to the cultural diversity of the contemporary university. This paper reports the findings of a study of 755 young second year undergraduates from three universities in the UK. The participants completed an online questionnaire containing measures of ethnocentrism and ‘cultural intelligence’, as well as an inventory of personality traits and original questions about their early life cultural experiences. The study finds that both ethnocentrism and cultural intelligence were predicted by agreeableness and openness, as well as a multicultural upbringing, foreign language ability and an international orientation. Gender was also a predictor for ethnocentrism.