Alisha Mashruwala Daswani CEO and Co-Founder, OnCourse Vantage Pvt. Ltd.
I was still in college when we started OnCourse in 2010. The five founders are my husband Akhil and I, we are based in Bombay, and Nitin, Niraj and Abhishek based in Delhi and Gurgaon. We have offices across the world and our focus is under-graduate, post-graduate education abroad and test-prep, primarily for SAT, ACT, G-MAT etc.
I want to talk about college applications in different countries such as the US, UK, Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong, Europe and India, to give you an overview of how these vary and differ, specifically at the under-graduate level. I’ll start with the US when you are preparing for applications for the US, a lot of what you do covers applications for other countries.
Typically, when you are applying to a US university, there are four broad categories of what you can apply for.
Liberal Arts
It is an umbrella term focused on flexibility. That includes 100-150 subjects that you can choose from: pure sciences, physics, math, biology, computer science, environmental science. It also includes humanities-based subjects like philosophy, languages, writing, arts and social sciences – political science, economic relations, history, international relations, psychology. People often think that Liberal Arts is a purely humanities-based stream when, in fact, it is just a short form of Liberal Arts and Sciences which is all-encompassing.
It is structured as a four-year curriculum built on the idea that at the age of 16-17, when a student is looking to apply to a university, they might not have clarity about what they want to study. So, they have the opportunity to go to university, explore all the subject areas and then, towards the end of their first year and closer to second year, take a more educated decision in terms of what they might want to focus on or major in.
By the end of the second year, most students declare their major or specialisation and, for the next couple of years, focus a little bit more on that. The Liberal Arts is the flag-ship programme that is great for students who are either unsure of what they want to study or who have diverse and varied interest.
When I went to university, I thought I wanted to major in economics. Once I understood more about psychology as a field and subject, I switched my major to psychology and minor in Economics. It is one of those areas where students, specially from India, who get pigeon-holed to either Commerce, Arts or Science, get a broader base to explore.
Business
It is great for students with the clarity that this is what they want to study. At the same time, they may not know what aspect of business they want to eventually specialise in. So, it is still a four-year curriculum where they explore finance, marketing, human resource management, strategy, accounting, real estate management, sports management, etc, in the first year. They get a broad idea of what business entails as an overall field and, in second year, choose their major or specialisation.
Engineering
Students often wonder about the difference between engineering and studying physics, math, biology, computer science under Liberal Arts. The main difference is that engineering focuses more on the practical application whereas within Liberal Arts, science is more theoretical. In an engineering degree, you can explore different types of engineering, be it mechanical, chemical, computer, or civil. In a year or so you chose your specialty. While business and engineering are flexible, they don’t have the flexibility of the Liberal Arts.
The good part about America education is that regardless of the stream you choose, every university gives you leeway to take elective courses. Even if you are studying engineering or business and you want to take that one odd philosophy class and one odd psychology class, you have that opportunity to do so.
Art and architecture
It is a very skill-oriented programme which is slightly less flexible; it is built for the students who are pretty sure that they want to study something in the design space. So, when they go to the college, of course, they have some opportunity to explore areas within art and design and then they choose their specialisation. But when you are doing something in-depth like art and design, it is slightly harder to take electives which fall outside your more creative space.
So, that gives you a broad overview of the under-graduate style of education in the US. Typically, a lot of top universities offer the Liberal Arts, so a lot of people ask that if they want to get into business in the future, do they have to study business at the under-graduate level? Often, when they apply for an MBA or Masters, which is business-oriented, many students do come from the Liberal Arts and engineering backgrounds as well. None of these doors really close out too many opportunities later, from a career perspective.
Canada is similar to the USA. They do offer some level of flexibility, but not as much. Typically, a Canadian University, again, like the US, offers a four-year degree where the structure is more into applied sciences – physics, chemistry, math, biology, computer science. The social sciences and humanities – legal studies, economics, politics, international relations, math, computing and technology, management and engineering fields. So, in Canada, typically all the broad base of Liberal Arts is still split into humanities and social sciences and the sciences are separate departments. So, when students enter a university in Canada, they do have to decide which stream they would like to go into and the flexibility is within that one stream. So, if they are studying Biology, it would be easy to switch to Chemistry but a little bit hard to move to computer science which may fall in different stream altogether. So, Canada is 7/10 in terms of flexibility structure as compared to the 10/10 of the USA.
When you look at countries like UK, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, a lot of the Commonwealth countries except Canada, the flexibility dies down. UK is great for students who have clarity in terms of what they want to study. UK is the opposite of the US: they need to know the subject or course they are most interested in. Therefore, UK is a three-year degree for majority of the programme whereas the US and Canada are four-year degrees. So, when they apply to UK, students choose the area of specialisation and the tough part is that while there, when they realise that this is not exactly the course they want to do, they must quickly re-apply if they want to change their major completely. That is why the one year in the US where they get to explore is important.
Indian education, for the most part, and Singapore, Hong Kong are sort of modelled around the UK education system where students need clarity in what they what to do. Unless, of course, in India they are looking at newer universities like Ashoka, Krea, Jindal, FLAME, which lend some kind of flexibility similar to the US education system.
Lastly, going to Europe. The reason I don’t club Europe into the UK curriculum is because it is very university specific. So, they have certain universities that give students flexibility in Liberal Arts similar to the US but the spectrum is not as broad. When one does a Liberal Arts programme in Europe, one typically focusses on humanities or social sciences, not so much on the pure sciences. So, someone keen on the sciences will go in slightly more focused programme in the Europe. Europe lends both options: the flexibility that someone might need and the focused programme that someone might be interested to study. This is very country-specific, university-specific. There are universities in Germany that are more focused but maybe universities in Netherlands that offer broad flexibility.
So, now that we have spoken about what to expect when we go to these universities, the big question is what to do at this stage when one is applying? Again, when I talk about admission criteria, I would like to start with the US, as it is again all-encompassing.
The US follows a 50-30-20 rule, where 50% of the focus or criteria weightage is given to academics, 30% to standardized testing and 20% to everything else. When universities are evaluating applications, they look at the student’s academic performance from grade 9 onwards. So, they like to see that there is an upward sloping trajectory, that students are getting better. Often, we find in the Indian grading system, that students focus on their Board exams or the 12th grade, but it is important to know that for US universities, every result matters. So, grade 9 tends to be important because that is the last set of final results, or internal results that students will send to the university before being given what is called the predicted score. So, an upward sloping curve or if the student has always been academically good, where they have maintained that level and that standard as they go forward is essential.
The second component that a lot of universities do consider is the course rigor and class rank. A lot of universities don’t actually rank students, what they do is they put them in a broad pool, like they say you are in top 5% to top 10% of your current academic class. So, that is an important factor as well. The second factor is rigor, this is primarily for universities to see whether or not students are challenging themselves academically or that they are not necessarily taking the easy route with the subjects that they have essentially chosen.
The next 30% is standardised testing, I know there is a lot of knowledge and information currently going on with the SAT and ACT. These are two separate tests and both are accepted by the universities in the US, where the SATs are more focused on Math and English primarily, and is scored on a scale of 1600, the ACT is scored on a scale of 36 which has Math, English and Science component. The science is not exactly pure science, it is a bit more based on science-based passages, so, it is analysing data that is already given. Potentially, assesses don’t have to have a prior science knowledge to be good at the ACT test. So, what we recommend is between Grade 10 and Grade 11, students try and take a diagnostic test and try to determine which is a greater fit for them by understanding naturally where their inclination lies in SAT. So, that becomes a crucial part in a lot of US applications. In the last two years, though, the SATs have been given lesser weightage because of Covid. The test got cancelled across the world, so universities made it an optional component in application. For a lot of universities what that means is that if you have a test score that you feel represents your over-all potential, definitely do send the score. However, if you feel like you have taken the standardised test or you didn’t have the opportunity to take the standardised test and it didn’t go as well as you had planned, you can still apply to these universities without that test score and as per the university this will not impact your application negatively. So, it is at the cusp where it is hard to say whether the SAT improves your chances of getting in or not but I do foresee that the next two years the test will become again an essential part of admission criteria, especially in top universities. So, that is the 30%.
The last component which is the balance 20% is what we like to call stand out factor. Your talent differentiates you from everyone else applying to these universities. So, while you have crossed that first academic index of your grades and standardised test scores, when you are applying to these universities, they want to see genuine students and personalities outside of academic crowd. So, these stand-out personalities can range from something you are genuinely passionate about, something that you would like to dwell deeper academically or something that you have done for the community as well. So, when I say passionate, it can be anything from sports to art to theatre to writing, anything that you love to do. What universities like to see is that there is consistency in efforts. So, if there is something that you started at a younger age and continued to pursue, rather than one of those things that you added on the application just for the sake of adding it to the resume. That is a really important component that they consider. So, that is on the passion front.
The second type of activity is academic related activity. This is a way for students to validate interests in a particular field. So, for example, if you said you love computers, so, what have you done to showcase your interest in computers that goes beyond just the high school education. It could be in the form of job-shadowing, internship, research, online course or maybe summer school that you decide to attend. When we say research or internship, of course, it is not easy for high school students to get these opportunities. So, we suggest if there is someone you can work under, unpaid internship where you have been given a particular project to do so, you learn, as well as it adds to resume. It is to understand if you are interested in that area genuinely. With research, there are now a lot of opportunities for the high school students to apply for research-based programmes. With research while you can always try to work under professors, again it is not easy as high-school students but there are more competitive programmes that you can apply in order to do some kind of research. They place you with a PhD student or a professor in the university that is doing research in a field that you like. So, this does require a considerable amount of dedication from a student where they are genuinely interested in the research in order to pursue a six-week research paper that they are doing with them.
The third area is the community service, this is interesting. They want to see what you are passionate about and the areas that you enjoy doing, how do you genuinely want to contribute to the environment and society around you. And that passion can be around any social cause – health, education, environment, anything that genuinely drives you. It is more than just volunteering at a particular place. It is finding a way and make the initiative sustainable in a way that if you worked at an organisation and taught math and English, of course it adds value however if you are able to create or mould certain curriculum for that particular NGO or school, that sustainable impact is really important. It can be small-scale but genuine. It only adds value if it is genuine and if it is something that you have been doing for a longer period of time.
At the end of the day, the university wants to see that you have got a holistic profile, they want to see that you are telling a story that brings out some aspect of your personality as well. So, they like to see more visual methods rather than showcasing on your application. A lot of universities do not look at recommendation letters or certificates, they like to see real work. This can be in the form of pictures, testimonials, website based on the initiative that you have taken. So, there are many ways to make that aspect more visual and a little bit more appealing. So, with your extra-curricular activities, I would like to look at consistency and quality; that is, do fewer things but go in-depth and tangible, that is how you showcase it to each of the universities.
Admission criteria for Canadian universities: a lot of what you do for US is covered in your Canada application as well. The only big and essential difference is that Canadian universities do not require you to take standardised tests. So, no SATs or ACTs, the main aspect they focus on is that 80% weightage is still given to your academics and 20% to the extra-curricular activities throughout high-school.
When you are looking at the UK university application, it is completely different from how the US and Canadian universities evaluate it. Given that the UK is focused in their overall approach, the same goes with the overall application process. Their essential focus is on your grade 10 results. So, ICSE, MYP, IGCSE whichever curriculum the student is studying, your grade 10 results and your grade 12 predicted course that is something that you will get from your school or college. So, essentially what counsellors in your school would do is give the university a particular score that they expect you achieve at the final grade 12. Once you have got these components in place, the universities in the UK give you a conditional offer. That is like a personalised cut-off where they state that we will accept you if you got 90% in the exams or as long as you get all As in the exam or as long as you get 38 in the IB. So, once you have got your final Grade 12 results only then you know whether the offer stands or not. So, 90% weightage is given to the academic component and balance 10% to the activities that you have taken up linked to your course of interest because your personal statement is an essay that you are going to write that is primarily going to be focused on why you want to study a particular course, what you want to study within that course, what you hope to do with that course in the future? And why you are a good fit for it. So, anything that validates this interest. So, if you have any experience, internship, research that shows why you want to do this programme, it is only going to add value to your application for UK. Another important component to keep in mind for UK application is that you can only apply to five universities. So, the application itself restricts you to five universities where you do typically apply for a similar course at all five and that is primarily because the personal statement that you are going to write is going to go to all your universities. So, unlike US where you write an individual essay for the university you apply to, in UK one essay is going to go in all universities.
When you are talking about newer universities like Ashoka, Krea, Jindal, FLAME, while all of them have slightly different process and evaluating application, they do look at your academics. And here they again look at your 10th grade, 11th grade and your 12th grade predicted score. So, all three components, typically they would have an aptitude test or accept the SAT or ACT score. Typically, Ashoka university will have an Ashoka Aptitude test that you will need to do, they will also evaluate your profile, extra-curricular activities, look at your essays but a very big component of the entire application process is the interview or on the spot-essay that they might have. So, a lot of these universities take different styles of interviews, one on one interview, it can be case-study interview, it can be a group environment interview so they know how you work in a collaborated team and that becomes a big part of the entire application and evaluation process.
So, that was the broad comparison of how the application criteria work in each of the countries, the US is a little broad on what they look at while UK is more specific, Singapore follows a similar system to the UK and Canada follows a similar system to that of the US admissions criteria.
Cost of education varies quite a bit. Typically, in the US, because it is four-year education, a lot of private universities can go upto US$ 80-85000 a year. State universities can be anywhere between US$ 50-55000 per year. In UK, a three-year programme goes from about GBP 32-35000. Canada, a four-year programme, dependent on the university and the course but approximately ranges from Canadian dollars 55000 Canadian in the lower spectrum and Canadian dollars 85000 in higher spectrum. Singapore is closer to Singapore dollar 50-60000 range. So, a lot is dependent on the university and the course of programme. The biggest scholarship opportunities are in the US and Canada, both give a lot of merit-based opportunities for students, slightly less so in UK and in Singapore. At least now they have the Singapore government bond which can subsidise your education if you commit to working in Singapore post your education for a few years. That bond is still on review for couple of years, but as of now it stands there.
Do you mentor kids for the cultural change that they will encounter?
It is a little harder to do that to be honest but we like to build a rapport with the students. Before they go, we do run a session which introduces them to different cultures, what to expect academically as well as non-academically. Small things like here students don’t necessarily think about plagiarism and areas like that, which we introduce to them before they go. Of course, on a one on one basis, a lot of them come back with more questions, personal questions, more focused on how to manage in the big city, how do I manage finances, different aspects. Because here students are not completely independent, it is harder there. But yes, some dos and don’ts for sure.
There is a big debate if a kid should do IB or HSC, so, is there a preference that universities see? Of course, IB is similar to their curricular but does that mean HSC has a negative weightage?
What is your opinion on studies in Australia?
So, I think the IB vs the Indian curriculum debate is definitely an extensive on-going debate. A couple of points over there. So, it is a little bit country specific. When you are looking at universities in Canada, US, they accept all of the boards pretty much equally, when you look at UK it is a little different because sometimes universities like Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial, LSE have a slight preference for either the A level curriculum or IB curriculum, the rest are quite open to another curriculum that you study. Singapore is again open to any curriculum you study only their requirements might vary based on the curriculum. For example, if you are an HSC student applying for a university in Singapore, they might need you to take SAT as opposed to an IB student where they might not require the SAT. So, just small variations there. All and all it’s very much dependent on which country you want to look at. The only consideration and kind of an asterisk I put is LSE and Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial which have preference to the International Boards.
I think in Australia the education system is very good, it follows a similar system to the UK. The Australian education for certain courses, if you are looking at physiotherapy, sports medicine, sports psychology, marine biology, there are very strong programmes if you want to study in Australia. If you are looking at a little bit more like engineering and business side of things or liberal arts and humanities flexibility then I think I will probably consider UK, US, Canada over Australia.
Does OnCourse also specialise in MBA programmes, what percentage of the students apply for MBA vs under-graduation?
Yes, we do have a complete post-graduation team that works with all kinds of Masters’ applications as well as MBA applications. With MBA if you have those few years of work experience then we can guide the students with applications anywhere in the world because the process is quite similar in terms of story-boarding, GMAT and what the universities you are looking for. So, yes, we have a team in place.
Do you also assist students or direct them in taking loans from banks?
There are 2-3 companies that we work with that have given student loans in the past. Loans from India always come at a much higher rate than loans from the US. There are some companies that we connect them to, yes.
Today this business is very large and every student is getting their essays written by others and being coached on what to do, getting set up on internship, I don’t know how the student really stands out.
From my experience, when I see an essay written by someone externally and when I see an essay written by the student themselves, it is very easy to tell. When you are writing essays, it is not a writing competition, they want to see the content, passion and genuineness that comes through the essay and that reflects your personality. So, the minute you get someone to write your essay for you, I do think it loses the entire personal side of it and if I can tell that, 100% sure the admission officers who have read millions of applications can tell that too. That is on the essay component. I think in last two-three years, besides students doing lots of extra-curricular activities, I feel like the students that do fewer activities but do it consistently. Starting from ages of 9-10 when there was genuine passion, not for the purpose of application and have really gone in-depth of that is very different on resume than the student who is adding it just for the sake of it. It is easy to tell the difference. The third component that has become really big is the recommendation letters. So, your school’s recommendation letters, that your counsellors give you, that is a complete unbiased view for the university to see what you are as a person and what you are as a student. if they are saying that you are extremely passionate about one thing but your resume and application shows something completely different, they are going to see that disparity and disconnect as well. So, while I think everyone’s application do stand out in different ways, there are small factors that show whether you are genuine or not.
Some universities don’t need SATs and ACTs, so, should we take it? And if a student decides not to take it then what is it that they should do to fill up the 30%?
I think in terms of SATs and ACTs if you are applying this year, it is less essential. I would take it if it is an ambitious student looking to apply to the top universities because at the end of the day right now, the SATs are not offered in a lot of centres in Bombay but it is offered in lots of parts of India and globally. So, I think SATs can provide that little bit of balance tool for some universities to evaluate the applications. So, if you are aiming for top colleges, I will suggest taking it. In the worst-case scenario if you don’t do well in it you have that luxury of not sending that score as well. Keeping that in mind, then the 30% moves to the academics. So, then 80% becomes academic and 20% remains your extra-curriculars, however like I mentioned, the recommendations are going to play a very important role in the entire process. Something that was not important 5-6 years ago has started gaining importance in the last few years especially when the students have moved and transitioned to online schools.
TO CATCH THE REST OF ALISHA MASHRUWALA DASWANI’S TALK ON STUDY OPPORTUNITIES ABROAD, CLICK HERE