‘You can’t Google for answers like that’: app to help students study abroad

Photo credit: Paul Stainthorp

Studying abroad at top universities has been the stuff of dreams for students in the Indian subcontinent for as long as one can remember, right from Gandhi to nobel laureate Amartya Sen to your daughter who is now in high school.

Once the prerogative of the rich, about 250,000 to 300,000 Indian students go abroad every year to study these days, according to data cited by the Economic Times.

The app has a bank of more than a thousand universities.

However, admission procedures for most top ranking universities across the world have not changed much in the last decade – it is still largely dependent on education fairs, mailers, and pricey private coaching.

“There is hardly any technology or analytics in the way universities hire international students,” Manish Katyan, chief executive and founder of Admission Table told Tech In Asia.

Not a greenhorn, the startup made it into the seventh batch of 500 Startups in 2013 and raised seed funding along the way.

A real-time marketplace for students and universities, the app helps potential university applicants find the best matches for their education dreams. But more importantly, it also solves a nagging revenue generation problem for universities, as cash-strapped public schools in the United States and elsewhere increasingly look at international students to bring in money.

Chat your way to the dream uni

An Android app (the iOS version is due in a few months’ time), Admission Table has a bank of more than a thousand universities, including all the top universities in the world, Manish said.

About 10 percent of those are what he calls “partner universities,” which pay a fee of around US$10,000 a year to get featured on the app. The rest don’t pay but are on board to offer students more options and, in the process, gain the app more traction.

Photo credit: Wikimedia

Any interested user needs to register on the app by filling in a questionnaire which asks for details like what stream of studies you are interested in, how much you can pay for tuitions, and which country is your preferred destination. Once registered, the user can interact directly with university counsellors (for partner universities) or with Admission Table’s in-house counsellors.

They can chat, ask for guidance on which university would be a better fit for their scores and interests, and also meet other students who are interested in the same institution or stream of studies.

The help team