Senior School Counselor Amit Mendiratta attended a webinar on 31st August on ‘Welcome Discussion’ which was a FICCI ARISE ‘Foreign College Placement’ initiative.
Principals, teachers, career counsellors from all over India from various schools attended the webinar.
The session started with understanding the difference between Universities and Colleges, thereby focussed on familiarizing the participants with various college options available, to dispel myths around college placement, to bring the best colleges to ARISE and to expand opportunities for students. The discussion also focussed on understanding higher education in the liberal arts and sciences, colleges, rankings of various liberal arts and sciences colleges and how liberal arts and sciences education sits with the Indian audience.
The speaker Mr. Manit Jain also listed out the factors that are important for Indian families while considering universities and colleges. There are factors like its prestige, financial aid, food served on/off campus, proximity to family member/friend, placement opportunities, Indian population in that area, which generally count.
The factors which one ignores are the class size and teacher student ratio, the quality of the faculty of the chosen course, academic programme and rigor, physical environment – urban/suburban/rural, student life, research opportunities available to students, study abroad, internship opportunities etc, were also discussed.
Mr Jain also put forth a list of Forbes Top 20 colleges in 2014 for the participants to get a clarity of the positions of the various colleges. In the last segment, the speaker invited the members to put across their suggestions.
It was a great initiative, much needed to familiarize the students and their parents about the efficacy of such courses and the colleges/universities providing them.
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