Leading university admissions counsellor, Kavita Singh, has several aces up her sleeve including not the least, her being alumni of both Oxford and Columbia. Determined to graduate only from Oxford and then equally determined to study business only from Columbia’s Business School, Singh says her having known clearly what she wanted to “mine” from these two institutions was instrumental in her getting through.

Instead of only looking at test scores and grades, the highly selective American universities deploy a holistic admissions process. Each admissions committee is trying to get as full a portrait as possible of the applicant including his activities outside the classroom, says Jacques Steinberg, senior editor at The New York Times and author of “The Gatekeepers: Inside the Admissions Process of a Premier College.”

Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has made fundamental contributions to at least four fields: social choice theory, welfare economics, economic measurement, and development economics.

As a student in a foreign country, worrying constantly about the future comes with the territory, says Radhika Vaz. But make an effort to make the most of your opportunity by doing what the locals do and join activities and courses you truly love so that you strike new roots and feel more at home, she says.

Seeking to study in the UK is like undertaking a short but intense course in rigour, order and timeliness. It isn’t good enough to be a bright student: you need to ensure you have all the paperwork in the original to prove your top-of-the-class status and not make a single mistake in the long-winded application process.

Significant changes to the UK student visa system have come into effect.To qualify for entry to study in the UK under the new system, students will be required to score 40 points. 30 points will be scored from having an unconditional offer of study from a licensed UK education provider while the remaining 10 will come from verifiable proof of funds to cover tuition and living costs.

Innovation calls for engineers who have their feet firmly planted in the practical world, and yet stretch far enough to stick their heads in the clouds, says Indian telecom maverick Sam Pitroda, who has nearly a hundred patents under his belt. Pitroda’s passion for invention was kindled following his graduation from the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.

Neena De re-visits her year as an American Field service student and says American educational institutions exude vibrancy and limitless possibilities for learning. There is something for everyone and those who are serious about their studies can get from this system much more than they have to put into it, she says.

If you have a family that can’t afford to pay then Yale provides grants to cover tuition and living expenses. President Richard Levin of Yale University says Yale wants to be a place that creates opportunities and educates leaders from all walks of life — regardless of financial background and nationality.

While in the thick of preparations for applying to studying abroad, it may not strike you as terribly obvious that you are embarking upon a life transforming journey. Dr Shailendra Raj Mehta, academic director of Duke’s Corporate Education program says stepping out of familiar terrain endows the frontier crosser with an enduring gift: being able to understand and work with at least two ways of perceiving the world.