The number of searches for educational courses outside India has more than doubled this year compared to the last, according to a study undertaken on the trends in overseas education by Sulekha.com, a local services and classifieds website.
“When compared to the previous year, the study witnessed 114% upsurge in online search for overseas education,” it said.
This study was based on 2.8 million visits and searches that landed on the Overseas Education page of Sulekha.com between 2014 and 2015, across cities including Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, New Delhi, Mumbai, Pune and Ahmedabad.
USA (33%) has emerged as the most preferred destination for Indian students looking for overseas education, followed by Canada (18%), Germany (16%), Australia (12%), UK (8%) and Singapore (5%).
For Business and Management related courses, students prefer US whereas for Arts and Social Sciences students prefer UK and for Engineering and Banking related courses, students prefer to go to Australia.
The key reason for going abroad has been cited as ‘exposure to a new culture’ and a new language.
63% of Indian students are searching for post-graduate courses online followed by 28% of the students looking for PhD courses and 9% for undergraduate programs.
In terms of the various fields of course preferences, 32% of students are looking for Medical courses online followed by Computer Science with 24%, Law & Legal Services with 21%, Economics & Econometrics with 15%, Communication and Media related with 10% and 6% for psychology.
The biggest increase in the number of students was seen in Delhi (140%), followed by Bangalore (122%), Hyderabad (99%), Chennai (93%), Mumbai (81%) and Pune (76%).