2021-11-27 16:24:35 2 Comments

Number of Indian students applying abroad doubles

Collegify, among the foreign education platforms that said the majority of applicants are targeting STEM courses in the US, followed by the UK and Canada. The pay packages and roles offered by top tech companies at campus recruitment drives are the main draws for the applicants, they said.“Indian students are being offered big pay packages in the US. For an engineering/CS/data science student, the starting range is $220,000 per annum as compared to $90,000 in 2019,” said Adarsh Khandelwal, co-founder of Collegify, which helps Indian students with admissions in top 100 foreign colleges. Students of financial accounting and economics in the US are being offered upwards of $160,000 as annual salary, he said. “In the last two years, over 1,000 students enrolled through Collegify at top colleges in the US are getting paid over $100,000 pa as salaries,” Khandelwal said. For instance, Shaurya Jain, a final-year student at University of Washington, Seattle, has multiple offers from leading tech firms. Jain told ET he is keen on joining a conglomerate that is offering an annual salary of $220,000, in addition to joining bonus, stocks, free laundry and meals. Nikhil Jain, cofounder of ForeignAdmits, said, “With better salaries by tech companies in the US to freshers and rising income levels of parents who can afford foreign education for children, the outflow from India for STEM courses is on a rise.” At ForeignAdmits, six out of 10 students are opting for courses "like computer science" in the US or Canada, he said. Other factors like the World Health Organisation’s (WHO’s) recognition of Covid-19 vaccines Covishield and Covaxin, and pent-up demand from last year have also amplified the interest of Indian students in furthering their studies abroad. Currently, about 80% of Indian students go for popular destinations including the US, UK, Canada and Australia, according to data shared by INTO University Partnerships, an organisation in the higher education space. Indian travel agency Thomas Cook is also seeing a spike of over two times for the US-Canada-UK uptake in the August-September semester of 2021 compared with 2020 despite the challenges regarding visa and entry. “In October 2021, we surpassed our pre-pandemic volumes of 2019. With easing in travel and health protocols, we expect a strong revival for the spring intake as well,” said Deepesh Varma, senior vice-president, foreign exchange, Thomas Cook (India) Ltd. At Yocket, over 200,000 students have already enquired for admissions this year till now. "And this is more than double from last year,” said Sumeet Jain, cofounder, Yocket. “Students on our own platform between September 2020 and September 2021 have gone up by 21 times. Other than the increase in students’ interests this year, this is also as we have grown fast in the last 1-2 years,” said Akshay Chaturvedi, founder of Leverage Edu. Another reason pushing more Indian students to explore admissions overseas is the fierce competition for seats in UG courses in the country, said the experts. “We are seeing Indian students pursuing everything from hotel management, sports analytics to study of wines to photosynthesis in the US and Canada,” said Chaturvedi. The job opportunities after a degree from the US are unmatched. Especially with three-years optional practical training (OPT), the return on investment is very high, according to Jain.

Sign Up for a Newsletter

Sign up for our mailing list to get latest updates and offers.