Indian student visas increased by 20 percent

Bangalore: India's top colleges are facing unexpected fallout. Students are no more ready to settle down for the second or third best college. Instead, they are heading westwards and filling up American universities with admission applications. Indian students have applied for visas to study in U.S., and according to a data released by U.S. embassy, the applications exceeded over 20 percent over last year. Last year 24,500 students were granted visas to join the American universities, most of them applied for Masters and 14.5 percent joined a grad school. Pratibha Jain, a counselor said, "But this year has been phenomenal rise in number of undergraduate students." The applications for visa were significantly higher than last year confirmed the officials at American embassy. An official said, "The U.S. has greatly expanded its counselor staffing and educational outreach initiatives to ensure that prospective students can get visa appointments and information they need." He also added, "This effort includes significantly increased funding for the Education U.S.A. advising centers." Jain noticed a shift in attitude of students and said, "Earlier they all want to go to 10 to 15 famous universities, now there is a range of good second tier colleges that charge about 10 to 15 lakh annually are also on Indian students' radar now." However, it's too early to forecast the actual entrants to American universities. An education consultant said, "It depends on how many meet with counselor approval."