India Stint Makes U.S. Students Fall in Love with Indian Culture

"Schools in India are so different from ours," said Magie Alexender, from Seattle, who studied at the Ladyanda Venkata Subarao Higher Matriculation School as a Class XI student.

Not only the school uniform was a new experience for her, but also she was impressed by the discipline of the students and the respect teachers are given by students in particular and the society in general.

"They have really got serious work ethics," Magie told PTI in an interview on her return from India.

And Rowan Croswell, the fourth student from the YES programme, described difference between Indian and American schooling system.

"American schooling is based on practice and application. You do all the four core subjects foremost of your schooling career. In India when you get into 11th grade you have three different streams and it is mainly memorization. You memorize vast quantities of information from text book or from lectures and you have to able put back on the paper immediately," she noted.

Observing that Indians in general are "very very intelligent", Mila said Indians have a very strong work ethics.

"They have a lot of ambition and lot of motivation. When they decide they want to be an engineer, they want to be best engineer possible. That is very important thing about Indian culture. They are very dedicated about what they said they want to be," she said.

Under the YES Program so far, more than 6,890 students come to the U.S. on the YES program to date, including 310 from India.

Since 2007, 148 Americans students travel overseas through this programme, including 15 to India.

Sponsored by the Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affair, the highly popular program offers American high school students and recent graduates full scholarships for up to one academic year to live and study in countries with significant Muslim populations.

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