The Creators of Popular College Admissions Test SAT are Interested in Helping More Indian Students Students will now have more opportunities to find universities in and outside of India says Linda Liu
By Aashika Jain
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119 years ago started an American not-for-profit organization to expand access to higher education. Ahead of its time, the College Entrance Examination Board ran a membership association of institutions. Today, with the name of The College Board it provides resources, tools, and services to students, parents, colleges and universities in the areas of college planning, recruitment and admissions, financial aid, and retention over a spread of over 6,000 schools, colleges, universities and other educational organizations.
In a conversation with Entrepreneur India, the Vice-President International of The College Board, Linda Liu said the India Global Higher Education Alliance announced earlier this year in India will simplify admissions processes, share and promote best practices across the global group of higher education institutions for students so that they can learn from what's working in different parts of the world, including in India.
"Through this initiative we want students to actually stay in India and also have opportunities across universities in India. For students outside of India who may wish to come and study here with through this initiative we also want to highlight some of the universities here so that they have those opportunities as well," Liu said.
How Does The College Board Help Students Get Universities of Their Choice
Among the significant activities to promote active participation, The College Board facilitates a college search tool not only for the students who come to India but across the globe.
"We have a tool called Big Future. So students who are interested in pursuing as you said yoga or Ayurveda, they can go on to Big Future and say I want to study Yoga in India and it will show them the universities that offer Yoga courses of study," Liu explained.
Liu said the other way is participation in the SAT and what students do when they take that exam is that they have an opportunity to send their scores to different universities around the world. Those universities will use those credentials as part of the admission process and really give us the universities greater insight into the abilities of the students. Through this mechanism students are able to connect with different universities around the world.
How are Opportunities Created by The College Board?
The College Board is a not-for-profit membership-based organisation and part of its work is enabled by organisations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for initiatives. But the vast majority of our funding comes from College Board itself.
Liu elaborated that the one thing that The College Board is launching as part of its Alliance is the College Board India's scholar program. Through that program, students will be able to recognise for their performance on the SAT. Students who are coming from lower income background they will also qualify to receive scholarships that are co-funded by the College Board and our alliance universities.
Through its partnership with Indian universities who are alliance members such as Ahmedabad University, Ashoka University, Azim Premji University, Bennett University, BML Munjal University, FLAME University, Manav Rachna University, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, NMIMS, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, The College Board wants to help low income students get ready for the SAT, access fee reductions and earn full scholarships that will be co-funded by the College Board and Indian Alliance member universities.
Liu hopes via The College Board's new program, over time many more organisations like The Gates Foundation would want to participate and occupy more funding for students to be able to access to excellent higher education in India.
