In his Wednesday statement, Rubio indicated that officials would particularly go after students "with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields".
Outside BISU's library, a student who asked to be identified by his surname, Wang, said that attitude "seemed a bit unreasonable".
"Students go to (the US) purely for academic progress, so they shouldn't have to deal with these kinds of inconveniences," the 19-year-old told AFP.
Classroom chaos
Young Chinese people have long been crucial to US universities, with 277,398 attending them in the 2023-24 academic year alone, according to a State Department-backed report of the Institute of International Education.
Beijing's foreign ministry on Thursday blasted Washington for acting "unreasonably" and said it had lodged diplomatic representations.
Also affected are large numbers of Chinese high school students preparing to study in the United States later this year, as well as a thriving private industry that helps prepare them for their lives overseas.
One teacher at a Beijing-based international school said it was "heartbreaking" to see "highly aspirational" pupils wracked with uncertainty over their international futures.
"The timing and short-termism of this announcement means that many of our students... have had to make major changes to their potential pathways," the teacher said, requesting anonymity as they were not authorised to speak to the media.
Daniel Strom, co-founder and lead consultant at Elite Scholar Advising, an educational consultancy, said many clients "remain hopeful that Trump's proposals will be reversed in the courts".
But, he added, some of them had begun to look at alternatives in Britain and Canada if their plans to go to America fell through.