WITH 3.5 million seats in over 350-odd disciplines, both at undergraduate and postgraduate level, the study choices before a young aspirant are mind-boggling. And we are not including international options available to a student. So, selecting the right option is exceptionally daunting for a youngster today, especially for those who either do not have enough scores to get into an elite institution or professional course, or do not have the inclination to do so.

So, we have put together between this issue and the previous one, a list of 75-odd entrances examinations, for a range of programmes - from integrated PhD programme offered for 10+2 students at IISc to the job-assured associateship offered by the Babha Atomic Research Centre to science postgraduates. In the course of our research we identified some odd gems – institutions that do not fill out all their seats because they don’t get the right students. And some which are getting into the national consciousness like Law, Design and Commercial Agriculture.

For example the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) which we featured in our June 2009 issue, is invariably unable to get the full quota of students for its prestigious BSc (Statistics programme). On the other hand, nearly 4 lakh people vie for the nearly 3000 seats available for a PGDM at the IIMs. Interestingly, if one does Actuarial Sciences after Statistics, the kind of payback in terms of salary and perks is equally good. And there are interesting courses like that strewn around the country. They are tough to get into, and difficult to clear but are worth it.

Since nearly a million seats are available in engineering and about 0.3 million in MBA we did feature some more prominent schools in both these streams in this issue as well. The multi-course institutions like the Deemed universities also find a place here.

We have featured some of them in this issue and hope to do a special feature exclusively on special courses in the coming months. So read on, identify the right course and get on the road to success.
 

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