Study Abroad News & Alerts

Macquarie University which is one of the top institutes in Sydney, Australia is offering a scholarship up to AU$40,000 to selected students. This scholarship will be offered to students who are in their undergraduate degree to cover their tuition fees. To qualify for the scholarship, it is important for the student to be a full-time undergraduate student at the university. Currently the scholarship is only for students from India and Sri Lanka. So it's compulsory for the student to hold a passport of either of the two countries. If a student has received an offer letter from the university, then they have to pay the commencement fees before the deadline to become eligible for the scholarship. The scholarship will be divided between four years and each year the student will be given AU$10,000.

The Institution of Engineering and Technology has announced a special IET India Scholarship for undergraduate students in India who are enrolled in UGC approved institutes. Students can submit their applications by 31st May, 2024. The selected student will get a call scholarship amount of INR 10,00,000. The scholarship is for both IET members and non-IET members. It is compulsory for students to have at least 6 CGPA in their previous undergraduate exams. There is no age limit for the scholarship. Students will be shortlisted on the basis of their academic background and extra curricular activities as well.

Four foreign students have been asked to vacate the hostel of the Gujarat University as their visas have expired. A lot of international students come to study various courses at Gujarat University. However, a lot of times the students are able to overstay because their visas expire and they do not leave the country timely. This year the university already knew about the visa expiration and also asked the students to leave the hostel premises before their visa fully expired. The consulates of the students have also asked them to return to their respective countries as not only the visas are going to expire but the scholarship tenure is also going to end.

Canada has revealed the number of student visa applications that they're going to accept in 2024. Around 4,85,000 student visa applications will be accepted in 2024. This means that around 6,06,000 student visa applications will be rejected. The provincal and territorial allocation of the number of student visas has been done. Each province in Canada has a fixed number of student visas that it can accept. The whole strategy is known as the Net Zero First Year Growth Model. The strategy aims to stabilise the number of international students in the country and make sure that each student is able to get ample health facilities and access to affordable accommodation. The country is also going to decrease international students by not giving visa extensions to international students as much as the previous year.

CBSE has made a major change in the class 11th and 12th exam format. Now students will no longer have to write long answers as they're not a part of the examination partner. As per the new format, students will not have to attempt more application based questions rather than long format questions. Case study based questions and MCQ questions have also been increased. This major change has been made under the NEP 2020. The CBSE board is trying to shift towards a curriculum that is more systematic and critical thinking based. With the coming session, students of class 11th and 12th will be trained to appear more competency based questions. As of now the syllabus in the pattern of examination for class 9th and 10th remains unchanged.

IIM Sambalpur has started accepting applications for its executive MBA program at its Delhi campus. IIM Sambalpur will be offering the course in a hybrid mode in which most of the classes will be conducted online and a few classes will be conducted in the campus. It is compulsory for the candidates to have scored at least 50% marks in their bachelors degree. The institute will accept applications only till 15th April, 2024. Since it's an executive programme, it's also compulsory for the candidates to have at least three years of professional experience. The tuition fee for the degree that will last for two years is going to be INR 14 lakhs. Candidates will get the opportunity to access all the facilities provided by IIM Sambalpur in this tenure.

Nova Scotia, Canada has decided to put a cap on the number of student visas that will be offered to international students in 2024. Joining a lot of other provinces in Canada, Nova Scotia will be offering only 12,900 student visas to international students. The share of international students has been allotted to Nova Scotia by IRCC. There is a difference of almost 9000 students in the terms of study permit offered the previous year. There are around 32 designated institutes in the province that will be affected due to this limitation. 10 of these institutions are proper universities and the other are community colleges. The province will also keep 99 slots in reserve for emergency cases and in case a new program is introduced by any of the universities.

The US student visa rejection rate is currently at an all-time high. Currently student visas are getting rejected and twice the number as compared to any other kind of visa. Almost a quarter million students have been rejected by the US so far. This means that around 36% of the total applications have been rejected. This is more than the number of applications rejected in any previous years. One of the major reasons why the US is rejecting so many student visas is the fact that immigration rate has broken all previous records. The US is receiving thousands of student visa applications on a monthly basis. already more than 1 million international students are studying in the US. Accepting all the applications is going to create a problem for the country and will lead to an accommodation crisis. Last year, the visa rejection rate was 15%.

The University of Strathclyde in partnership with the British counselling is offering an engineering scholarship worth £10,000 to international students. Students from various fields of engineering including Aerospace, mechanical, biomedical, chemical, and many more will be offered this scholarship. This scholarship is specifically meant for students from India, Malaysia, and Thailand. One student will be selected from these countries. all the interested students must submit their applications by 3rd May, 2024. The scholarship is only meant for students who have completed their undergraduate degree and have received a full-time offer for a postgraduate degree from the University of Strathclyde. 

The Australian government has introduced the concept of genuine student requirement in place of the general temporary entrant. Although it was already announced on 11th December, 2023, the change has now been implemented. The GS requirement plays an important role for international students to get a visa. Instead of a 300 word statement of purpose, students will learn how to answer a series of questions. All of these questions will be related to why a particular student wants to study in Australia and what are their future plans. These questions and answers will help in giving the immigration department an idea about the student and their future plans. The Australian government thinks that this change will help in selecting the right candidates.

The UGC has notified all universities and colleges in India to organise an induction program in the beginning of the session. This will help students transition in a smooth way from school to university without much hassle. As the new academic session will be starting very soon, all universities in India will have to organise an induction program specifying about the syllabus and how a student is supposed to study. Moreover, all universities and colleges will also have to upload a photo or a video of the induction programme being organised. Many a time students have a lot of doubts that are never resolved by the university and the teachers because of which they face a lot of academic problems.

The Central board of secondary education has announced that any student failing in a compulsory subject in class 10th will now get the opportunity to compensate for it with a skill based subject. Compulsory subjects include maths, science, and social science. All students will get the opportunity to select a sixth subject. If the sixth subject is a skill-based subject, then students can easily replace it with a compulsory subject in their report card. Also, CBSE has advised all schools to make students study at least three languages up to class eight. Currently, this is just a suggestion but not an implementation. any student has not been able to clear a third language in class ninth will be given the opportunity to appear for class 10th board exams.

The Ministry of Tribal Affairs has started a new initiative under which the scheduled Tribes students of India will be given a scholarship to pursue their higher education. The national Fellowship schemes for students who have completed their masters degree and want to pursue a PhD degree. The national scholarship schemes for students who want to pursue an undergraduate and postgraduate degree in the field of engineering, medicine, management, and law. The family income of the student must be below INR 6 lakhs annually and the student must belong to the scheduled tribe. students having an excellent or promising academic record will be chosen. For more details, candidates can check the official website of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs.

Recently, the UGC has decided that NET schools will be applicable on all the universities around the country for getting admission in PhD programmes. Now students will not have to give multiple entrance exams to get admission into PhD programmes . Generally top scorers of the UGC NET did not have to appear for the entrance exam of any university as they were eligible for junior research fellowship. However, other students had to give multiple exams to qualify for the junior research Fellowship of various universities. This decision implemented by UGC is meant to save time and money for students. However, many students and teachers are complaining that such a decision will strip universities around the world from their right to exercise cultural diversity.

The international student population in Australia has currently surpassed the 700000 mark. More than 2.8 million temporary residents have also entered the country in the past one year. The prime minister of Australia has acknowledged the influx of international students and has said that the pandemic has played a major role because there was no immigration for at least two years. Students had been waiting to pursue their higher education and as soon as the travel was allowed, students started going to foreign countries in huge numbers. At the same time, the result rejection rate for international students is all-time high in Australia. In the month of February, more than 50,000 student applications were rejected by Australia.

IIT Kharagpur has decided to no longer offer any kind of branch upgrades for undergraduate courses. The institute however will be offering double major programmes to interested students. Students will be able to opt for a five year dual degree only after completing the first year of their degree. This will help the students understand how the course is and whether they would like to pursue it for five years or not. However, the option of changing the branch is no longer applicable. Earlier students scoring a CGPA of 8.5 in both their semesters of the first year were allowed to take branch upgradation. this policy was already scrapped by a lot of other institutes in the country. Now IIT Kharagpur has also joined the bandwagon and it will not allow any kind of branch upgradation for UG courses.

James Cook University from Singapore has decided to award 10,000 Singapore dollars to selected Indian students who would be taking admission in the university. The university will be offering multiple scholarships in various disciplines across bachelors and masters degrees. Some of the top courses that will be offered by the university include accounting, business, environment studies, game development, and many more. The initiative has been started by the university to provide more exposure to students of South Asian descent and give them exposure. This will also encourage more students from India to choose Singapore as their potential study abroad destination.

The CUET PG exam 2024 has been successfully concluded. This year more than 4,30,000 students have appeared for the exam in more than 253 cities across the country. The examination was successfully conducted in over 565 centres spread across various cities in the country and outside India as well. The examination was conducted between 11th March and 28 March for various disciplines. This time UGC decided to organise the exam in hybrid mode instead of only conducting exams in CBT mode. The exams were prepared by a team of 950 experts and numerous translators in various languages for students around the country.

NTA has released the admit cards for JEE Main session two exam. The examination will be conducted between 4th April to 9th April, 2024. The admit cards will contain all the information related to the examination centre, time, slot and the day and date of the examination. It is compulsory for students to carry their admit cards to the examination hall otherwise they wouldn't be allowed to give the exam. To download the admit card, candidates have to visit the official website of JEE Mains and submit all the important details before downloading the admit card. The results for the JEE Main session 1 exam have already been released. After conducting the session 2 exams, NTA  will be releasing the results within a month.

The National Board of Examination in Medical Sciences will be releasing the results for NEET MDS by 18th April, 2024. Through the examination, students will be able to get into the top dentistry programmes in the top medical institutes of the country. All the information related to the marking criteria is present on the official website of the examination. In case two students get similar marks, the one with a lesser number of wrong questions will be given more preference in a higher ranking. On the basis of their ranks, students will be getting admission in various universities in the country as well as abroad.