India to launch special drive to attract foreign students

Panaji, May 27 : India will make a special drive to attract foreign students, including NRIs, for enrolling them in the prestigious National Institute of Technology, now that the seats earmarked for them rose to 96 from this academic year, with the opening soon of a NIT in Goa.

Announcing the commencement of the Goa NIT from Farmagudi, from July this year, Prof Sandeep Sancheti, director, NIT Karnataka (Surathkal), appointed mentor of the new institution, today said the NIT engaged 50 student ambassadors to rope in foreign students and the NRIs for enrollment in the Indian NITs.

Under the 'Direct Admission of Students Abroad' (DASA) scheme, for B Tech engineering programmes, he said, the scholastic aptitude run by an US body was a must. The processing fee for each student appearing for the test was reduced by 100 dollar to 250 dollar this year.

It would be reduced further in future as an incentive. Entire process of admission for the foreign students was online. Most of the students had now been preferring courses related to EEE, with more job opportunities available.

Meanwhile, the authorities had identified 3 sites for location of the new 300 acre NIT campus and the site selection committee of the Centre would soon visit Goa for finalising the site, which had to be acquired and handed over to the management of the NIT for building the campus in about 2 years.

Till then, the NIT would function in the existing engineering college campus at Farmagudi.

Fifty per cent of the seats would be reserved for eligible students of Goa, Daman, Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Lakshadweep.

The rest would be filled on all india basis.

Initially, the Goa campus will open courses in Electronics and Communication Engineering, Electrical and Electyronics Engineering and Computer Science and Engineering, with an intake of 30 students in each branch.

Goa NIT was one of the 10 new campuses sanctioned recently by the union ministry of Human Resources Deverlopment, in addition to the 20 existing now. The Nagpur-based Central Counselling Board under the ministry is the nodal agency for admission of the eligible students in the NITs on the basis of the AIEEE-2010 test result.