Institution Profile

Universal Business School, Karjat

Established in 2009, Universal Business School, Karjat is a wholly residential B-school, two hours drive from Mumbai, dispensing contemporary international business management education in association with several globally top-ranked offshore universities – Dipta Joshi Spread across 40 acres in a pristine valley near Karjat, a two-hour drive from India’s commercial capital Mumbai, the Universal Business School (UBS, estb.2009) is a wholly residential B-school dispensing contemporary international business management education to 480 students from 20 countries. Ranked among Mumbai’s Top 5 B-schools by the Times of India and The Week, UBS has established an excellent reputation for its experiential undergrad BBA programme, postgrad diploma and executive development programmes delivered in association with top-ranked foreign universities including the Cardiff Metropolitan University, UK; Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago; Lincoln University, USA; Swiss School of Management, Italy and INSEEC Business School, France. Founded by the late Gurdip Singh Anand (1942-2019), a highly-respected business management educator with teaching experience in the country’s top-ranked B-schools including Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies, S.P. Jain Institute of Management Research (SPJIMR) and Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (all in Mumbai), together with son Tarun, former chairman and MD of Thomson Reuters, South Asia, UBS boasts a stellar board of governors. Among them: Madhav Kalyan, MD & CEO, JP Morgan, South Asia; Motilal Oswal, chairman, Motilal Oswal Financial Services, and Dr. Indira Parikh, former dean, IIM-Ahmedabad. The school’s 30-strong faculty is highly qualified with seven of them serving as advisory council members of the globally-respected Harvard Business Review. “In UBS, our prime objective is to provide contemporary, experiential and industry aligned business management education to enable our students to mature into ethical, global business leaders capable of building strong and resilient organisations while adhering to the highest standards of corporate governance,” says Tarun Anand, an alum of the Tuck Business School (USA), Michigan Ross School of Business (USA), IE Business School (Spain) and SPJIMR (India). Currently, UBS offers the undergrad BBA and BA degree programmes, postgrad MBA and PGDM (postgrad diploma in management) in collaboration with Cardiff Metropolitan University, UK; Masters in business analytics with the University of Dallas, US; the MBA programme of the Swiss School of Management, Italy; and a Global MBA (Cardiff, IIM-Indore and UBS). Other international higher ed partners include INSEEC Business School, France and University of Economics, Bulgaria. With the Covid-19 pandemic still rampaging across the country and around the world, the school is offering its executive programmes in the digital mode, while 300 students who returned to campus in February are attending in-person classes. “The defining feature of UBS is not only what we teach but how we teach. The UBS Board of Governors comprising 60 CEOs, directors, and business leaders of top-ranked corporates reviews the school’s academic andragogies and processes twice each year to ensure that our curriculums are in sync with changing industry dynamics and our faculty is up-to-date with latest international pedagogies and business practice. Moreover, we ensure academic rigour through innovative projects and mandatory research assignments by developing students’…

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University of Edinburgh, UK

With an academic tradition stretching back in time to over 400 years, Scotland’s pride hosts 13,000 international scholars from 160 countries among its 44,510 students – Summiya Yasmeen Once upon a time, best quality higher education in Britain, and indeed the Commonwealth, was synonymous with Oxford, Cambridge and London universities. But in the millennium, Scotland’s University of Edinburgh (UoE, estb.1583) has emerged as a formidable academic competitor to Sassenach higher education institutions of the south. According to the QS World University Rankings 2020, UoE, which is ranked #20 worldwide, is one of Europe’s most preferred universities. With an academic tradition stretching back in time over 400 years, Scotland’s pride hosts a massive contingent of 13,000 international scholars from 160 countries — among its 44,510 students. Over the past four centuries, the faculty and alumni of this venerated varsity have played a major role in shaping world history. Among its most illustrious alumni are philosopher David Hume; Charles Darwin, author of the Origin of Species; physicists Sir Edward Appleton and James Clerk Maxwell; Lord Joseph Lister who introduced antiseptics into surgery; Sir James Young Simpson, inventor of chloroform; surgeon Elsie Inglis; James Hutton, father of modern geology; and novelists Sir Walter Scott, J.M. Barrie, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Like most higher education institutions worldwide, UoE has been under lockdown for the past seven months to check the spread of the raging Covid-19 pandemic. Teaching and assessment is currently being delivered in the digital online mode. Edinburgh. The capital of Scotland, historic Edinburgh (pop.500,000) is one of the greenest and most architecturally splendid cities of the world, attracting over 2 million visitors annually. However, it is renowned not only for its scenic cityscapes but also for its rich social, cultural, learning and sports traditions. Its landmarks include several art galleries and concert halls; the Royal Museum of Scotland; the Royal Botanic Garden; Parliament House; and the spectacularly illuminated Edinburgh Castle. Sports facilities include a variety of golf courses, the Royal Commonwealth Pool and Meadowbank Stadium. And for students who want to get away for the weekend, Edinburgh offers easy access to the coastline, hills and rugged terrain of the scenic Scottish Highlands. Moreover, Edinburgh annually hosts a number of international literary and cultural events and has been rightly christened a ‘Festival City’. The only downside perhaps is its testing windswept climate. Temperatures range from sub-zero in winter to 25°C in summer. Campus facilities. As one of Britain’s oldest universities, UoE is renowned for its classical buildings which are the city’s best-known landmarks and architectural features. The majority of the university’s faculties are grouped in and around the central George Square near the historic Royal Mile in the city centre. Students can also expect to enjoy a vibrant social and cultural life. The students union offers food services and an extensive calendar of events including live bands and clubs. Known as the Edinburgh University Union, this association occupies seven buildings and administers on-campus catering and bars, games rooms, union…

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Clarion School, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

This new-age pre-primary to class V co-ed day school sited in the shadow of Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, has quickly established an excellent reputation within the emirate’s expatriate parents community – Summiya Yasmeen Sited in the heart of Dubai — the commercial capital of the United Arab Emirates and one of the world’s most diversely cosmopolitan cities with 83 percent (2.6 million) of its residents foreign-born — the new-age Clarion School (CS, estb.2016) has quickly established a reputation within the emirate’s expatriate parents community for providing a rigorous American-style curriculum, experiential and inter-disciplinary pedagogies and excellent sports and co-curricular education. This five-year-old school was adjudged runner-up in the ‘Best American School in the UAE’ competition organised by the Dubai-based schoolscompared.com. Recognised by the Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA), the Dubai government’s education quality assurance and regulatory authority, Clarion is currently a pre-kindergarten to class V co-ed day school with 240 children of 42 nationalities instructed by 35 teachers. New grades are being added each year with the management having applied for accreditation with the US-based New England Association of Colleges and Schools (NEASC). Clarion reopened last August after almost five months of closure because of the Covid-19 disruption with students given the option of in-person, online and hybrid classes. However, 92 percent of students attend in-person classes every day. “Clarion School is UAE’s premier American model school conceptualised as an experiential learning and discovery academy. We believe that a child with a curious mind will become a life-long learner capable of succeeding anywhere in the fast-changing world. Therefore, we have designed a unique curriculum to deeply engage children in purposive and meaningful learning. This curriculum meets the highest tier American K-12 education standards, including the Common Core, which is interdisciplinary, stimulating and taught by highly qualified educators,” says James Pastore, principal of Clarion School. An alumnus of the University of Notre Dame and College of New Jersey, USA, Pastore has over 30 years of international teaching experience having taught in schools in Latin America, Italy, and the US, before being appointed principal of CS last August. This 21st century school is promoted by the Dubai-based Scholars International Group (SIG) founded by Indian-origin entrepreneur Aparna Verma, a graduate of Georgetown University, USA, and Parsons School of Design, New York. SIG also owns and manages the Cambridge International (UK)-affiliated Dubai Scholars Private School (promoted as a nursery by Aparna’s mother in 1976) and the Scholars International Academy, Sharjah, UAE. Together, the three schools have an aggregate 3,346 students. The newest greenfield venture of SIG, Clarion is sited on a modern 4.7 acre campus built in the shadow of Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building. The school’s open free-flowing campus houses 27 Smart Classrooms, a carpeted library with 7,200 print volumes, several Apple computer workstations and a mini ‘amphitheater’ for read-aloud presentations. Moreover, 150 ipads are distributed among the school’s 27 classrooms for use by students. Sports facilities include two swimming pools, a synthetic turf football ground, basketball and tennis/volleyball…

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University of California, San Diego

Initially funded by donations from the city council to provide engineering education, over the past half century the multi-disciplinary UCSD has established a global reputation for teaching and research – Dipta Joshi One of ten campuses of the University of California’s public education system, over the past half century the University of California at San Diego (UCSD, estb.1960) has established a global reputation for teaching and research. In the World University Rankings league tables of Times Higher Education and QS, UCSD is ranked #33 and #54 respectively. Sited on the erstwhile Camp Mathew military training ground and contiguous to the country’s first marine research station — the Scripps Institution of Oceanography — UCSD was initially funded 60 years ago by donations from the city council to provide higher education to “students desirous of entering into the professional field of engineering”. Today, its Jacobs School of Engineering ranks #9 and its department of bioengineering ranks #4 in America’s Best Engineering Schools Rankings of US News and World Report. Currently, UCSD’s 12 academic schools and divisions offer 140 undergraduate, 35 postgraduate, 47 doctoral and five professional education programmes to 40,066 students from 100 countries worldwide, mentored by 2,959 faculty including 16 Nobel laureates. The university’s incumbent chancellor is Pradeep Khosla, an alum of IIT-Kharagpur. UCSD’s alumni roll call features D.J. Patil, the first data scientist of the White House; Nick Woodman, founder, CEO of GoPro and Kate Rubins, NASA astronaut and the first scientist to sequence DNA in space, among others. After remaining shut for over six months to check the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, the UCSD campus began in-person instruction for students last September. However, students are required to test for Covid contagion every week. San Diego. The second largest city of California state, San Diego (pop.1.3 million) is reputed for its mild year-round climate, natural deep-water harbour, scenic beaches and parks, and recent emergence as a healthcare and biotechnology industry hub. Popular city attractions include the San Diego Zoo, San Diego Safari Park, SeaWorld, and Legoland among others. A 20-minute drive from downtown San Diego is La Jolla county which hosts the main UCSD campus, surrounded by the Pacific Ocean on three sides and Mt. Soledad on the fourth. Outdoor activities include surfing, kayaking, snorkelling, and scuba-diving at La Jolla’s ten pristine beaches; hang-gliding and hiking through the Torrey Pines Nature Reserve; and visiting the Birch Aquarium. La Jolla’s idyllic Mediterranean climate ensures that temperates year-round are ambient. The average daily temperature is 21.4°C. Summers (June-August) are warm and winters (December-February) are slightly cooler. Campus facilities. The university’s 1,200-acre woody coastal campus is located in the scenic seaside town of La Jolla. The campus hosts 761 buildings, natural eucalyptus reserves, the Birch Aquarium, a museum, and the world’s largest outdoor ‘shake table’ that enables researchers to simulate and study earthquake vibrations. The San Diego freeway passes through the campus. The university’s bibliotheques include the Biomedical and Geisel libraries hosting over seven million digital and print volumes, journals, and multimedia…

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Prometheus School, Noida

Despite the Covid-19 pandemic having forced closure of this greenfield enterprise within six months of admitting its first batch, this tech-savvy IB candidate school has got off to a good start because of excellent word-of-mouth publicity received from satisfied parents and students- Autar Nehru Despite the mint-fresh Prometheus School, Noida (PSN, estb.2019) having experienced early turbulence because of the Covid-19 pandemic, its promoter-trustee Mukesh Sharma believes this K-12 co-ed day school has got off to a good start. Because of widespread word-of-mouth publicity received from satisfied students and parents since it admitted its first batch of 30 students in September 2019, its enrolment for the academic year 2021-22 starting in July has risen to 196. Unfortunately, six months after the school admitted its first batch, the Central government ordered closure of all education institutions including preschools, schools, colleges and universities to check the spread of the virulent virus. Thus far, this co-ed day school has been providing online education to its K-12 students, although as we go to press, it has reopened for class X-XII students on an optional basis. “The switch to online learning that this new greenfield school has experienced was quick and seamless because Prometheus was conceptualised and established from the start as a tech-savvy school to provide engaging learning experiences rooted in inquiry-based and experiential learning pedagogies. As soon as schools are permitted to reopen we will go full throttle to empower our students to bloom into technologically adept, intellectually equipped, caring young people capable of fulfilling their dreams and aspirations in academia, diverse professions, and business,” says Sharma. An alumnus of BITS-Pilani and University of Colorado, Boulder, USA, Sharma began his career with DCM Data Systems followed by stints with IBM Corporation, Quark Inc, Gale Group and Adobe Systems. In 2003, he went solo with the promotion of QA Infotech Pvt. Ltd and since then has bootstrapped several companies including QAIT DevLabs, Perseverance IT Solutions, Affidabile Solutions and WeBuildLearning. In 2019, he decided to cross the line from being a “dissatisfied parent and IT entrepreneur to edupreneur,” and leverage his “digital acumen in education with passion to reimagine teaching and learning” to establish PSN. Spread across a 7.5 acre campus in Noida’s green Jaypee Wishful Township, PSN is a candidate school for the International Baccalaureate (IB) Primary Years, Middle Years and Diploma programmes and is pursuing authorisation as a full continuum IB World School. It also offers students the option of Cambridge IGCSE and A levels in classes IX-XII. This co-ed day school’s ultra-modern four-storeyed main building houses ICT-enabled classrooms, STEM lab facilities, auditorium, studios for the performing and visual arts, separate junior and senior school libraries, a medical clinic and dining halls. Sports facilities include a sports centre for indoor games including shooting range, squash, yoga, and table tennis, badminton and tennis courts, in addition to a horse riding academy, Olympic size swimming pool and open playground for field games such as soccer, cricket and athletics. The school’s campus also hosts a unique Prometheus…

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University of Virginia, USA

Founded by Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence (1766) and president of the United States (1801-1809), UVA is routinely ranked among the Top 5 public universities of America – Dipta Joshi Over the past two centuries, the University of Virginia (UVA, estb.1819) has acquired an excellent reputation for teaching and research with the institution routinely ranked among the Top 5 publicly-funded universities in the US. In the 2020 edition of America’s Best Colleges of the US News & World Report, UVA is ranked #4 among public universities while the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2021 ranks it among the Top 200 worldwide (#117). The university was founded by Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), one of America’s founding fathers, author of the Declaration of American Independence (1776) and the country’s third president (1801-09). Departing from established tradition of the time, Jefferson promoted UVA as a religiously secular institution of higher learning. The university’s campus layout designed by Jefferson himself, is an architectural landmark and the first varsity campus worldwide to be awarded World Heritage Site status by UNESCO. UVA’s 12 academic schools, located in Charlottesville, offer a wide range of study programmes to 16,000 undergraduate and 7,800 postgrad students. A second campus (estb.1954) in Wise, Southwest Virginia hosts a public liberal arts college with 2,065 students. After remaining shut for over six months to check the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, the UVA campus began in-person instruction for undergraduates on September 8. Charlottesville. Named in honour of Princess Charlotte, the wife of King George III of England (ousted by George Washington), Charlottesville is sited on a hill overlooking the River Rivanna in Albermale County, Virginia. A picturesque town surrounded by rolling countryside and dotted with aesthetically designed buildings and historical landmarks, the city is regularly ranked among America’s most preferred habitations. Charlottesville (pop.48,457) was named as the ‘happiest city in America’ by the US National Bureau of Economic Research (2014) and featured among the ‘Top Ten College Towns’ rankings of Partners for Livable Communities. A small but historically important habitat, Charlottesville is best known for contributing America’s three founding presidents — Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe. Jefferson’s renowned mountain-top home Monticello, attracts a steady stream of tourists every year. Downtown Charlottesville is the legal, financial and social hub of the community, and hosts a plethora of shopping malls, cafes and restaurants. The climate is sub-tropical with hot and humid summers and cold winters. Rain falls throughout the year in Charlottesville. Campus facilities. Together with Jefferson’s home at Monticello the UVA campus is a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site. Sprawled over a 3,392-acre campus the varsity hosts 560 buildings with the central campus popularly known as the Grounds extending over 1,166 acres. The university revolves around its Academical Village, which includes the specific areas of The Lawn (a grand terraced green space surrounded by residential and academic buildings), The Gardens and The Range. The Rotunda, inspired by the Pantheon in Rome, stands at the north-end of The Lawn…

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Indian School of Development Management, Noida

ISDM has quickly built an excellent reputation for educating and training graduates for employment in India’s fast-growing voluntary services sector – Autar Nehru Promoted in 2016 with the objective to “professionalise the leading and managing of social purpose organisations”, the Indian School of Development Management (ISDM), Noida has quickly built an excellent reputation for educating and training graduates for employment in India’s fast-growing voluntary services sector. India hosts one of the world’s largest number of social impact, aka voluntary services, organisations — 3.17 million including schools, colleges, faith-based institutions and NGOs. “ISDM is committed to strengthening the domain of development management with study programmes that transcend the silos of ‘development perspectives’ and ‘management principles’. General business management practices cannot be retrofitted to execute development projects effectively. The social sector requires managers and leaders trained in development management. Over the past few decades in particular, India’s development sector has experienced huge changes in the character and role of social impact organisations, which need people with specialised knowledge and skills to realise their goals. ur mission is to develop a cadre of reflective, committed professionals capable of leading and managing organisations that can stimulate sustained social change and impact at scale,” says Gaurav Shah, an alumnus of BITS, Pilani and IIM-Calcutta and former management consultant with Procter & Gamble, American Express, Azim Premji Foundation, and Lok Capital, prior to his appointment as founder-director of ISDM four years ago. ISDM is the brainchild of a group of highly-respected social entrepreneurs and industry leaders including Ashish Dhawan, former venture capitalist and founder of the Central Square Foundation; Dr. Pramath Raj Sinha, co-founder of Ashoka University and senior partner at 9.9 Media; Rohit Kapoor, vice-chairperson and CEO of EXL; Ravi Sreedharan, formerly at HSBC and Azim Premji Foundation; and Sharad Agarwal, board member at IIMPACT (a Gurgaon-based NGO working for education of girl children). In 2016, the founder group crowd-funded ISDM which launched its flagship one-year postgraduate programme in development leadership (PGP-DL) “to develop a cadre of management professionals that can manage and lead social purpose organisations for sustainable social impact at scale”. Thus far, 200 graduates have been certified by ISDM and campus-recruited by well-known NGOs and development organisations including Azim Premji Philanthropic Initiative, Hindustan Unilever Foundation, Quest Alliance, Dasra, Barefoot College, Dr. Reddy’s Foundation, SRF Foundation and Udhyam. According to Shah, the unique feature of the institute’s specially designed PGP-DL curriculum is that it combines immersive classroom learning experience, collaborative group learning, and field studies under its Realising India programme. “Our PGP-DL programme has been specially designed to include courses, workshops and guest lectures specific to the social sector. Moreover our context-based collaborative group learning pedagogy adapts business management concepts and practices to voluntary service organisations. It involves students collaborating with peers in groups facilitated by a bricoleur i.e, mentor,” says Shah. Sited within a modern, thoroughly-equipped four-storey building in Noida’s Sector 62, ISDM also hosts a Knowledge and Research Centre which collaborates with development and academic institutions around the world to create…

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Berklee College of Music, USA

Among the world’s most prestigious institutions for study of music and the performing arts, Berklee alumni have won 297 Grammy, 34 Emmy, seven Tony and eight Academy awards Established in 1945, the Berklee College of Music, Boston (aka Berklee), is among the world’s largest and most prestigious higher education institutions for the study of contemporary music and the performing arts. CEOWorld magazine ranked Berklee among America’s Top 3 music schools in 2019, while The Hollywood Reporter ranks it among the Top 25. Moreover, Berklee is ranked #3 in Forbes’ rankings of colleges with most Oscar, Emmy and Grammy-winning alumni. To date, 126 Berklee alumni have won 297 Grammy, 34 Emmy, seven Tony and eight Academy awards. Founded as Schillinger House in 1945 by musician and MIT graduate Lawrence Berk, the college initially provided jazz music education. In 1954, when the curriculum expanded to include other music genres, it was renamed the Berklee School of Music and re-christened the Berklee College of Music in 1970. On January 20, 2016, Berklee signed a merger agreement with The Boston Conservatory (estb.1867) — one of the world’s oldest and pre-eminent performing arts conservatories. The combined institution is known as Berklee with the conservatory renamed The Boston Conservatory at Berklee. With its main campus in Boston, a second campus in New York, and an international campus in Valencia, Spain, Berklee offers study programmes in music and the performing arts to 6,439 undergraduate and 560 graduate students. The faculty-student ratio is an enviable 1:4. However, in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, all Berklee programmes are being offered remotely/online for the current fall semester Boston. The capital of Massachusetts state, Boston (pop.8.2 million) is the sixth largest city in the US. But perhaps more important, Boston is the ultimate gown town and provides an exhilarating academic experience with more than 50 colleges and universities situated in the Greater Boston area. The climate in Boston is continental, with cold, snowy winters and warm to hot and humid summers, punctuated with frequent thunderstorms. Campus facilities. Berklee’s main campus hosts 25 buildings in Boston’s Back Bay area. Classrooms are specially designed to enable music learning and equipped with audio-visual and stereo sound systems, overhead projectors, whiteboards, musical instruments and excellent acoustics. The main dining hall is housed within a floor-to-ceiling glass structure that transforms into a concert venue. Berklee’s sprawling campus houses 12 performance venues, the largest being the Berklee Performance Center. This 1,215-seats concert hall hosts performances and productions by students, faculty, touring artistes and community organisations. Renowned Indian musicians A.R. Rahman and Shankar Mahadevan have performed at the centre jointly with Berklee students. For sports and games, Berklee students are entitled to utilise health and fitness services of the neighbouring Northeastern University, YMCA, Boston Sports Club and the Tennis and Racquet Club at discounted rates. Admission. Each study programme at Berklee specifies its own admission criteria. For admission into undergraduate programmes, students must submit online application forms together with academic transcripts evaluated by a credential agency (Span…

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Avasara Academy, Pune

Affiliated with the UK-based Cambridge International, Avasara is a need-blind class VI-XII day-cum-boarding school for meritorious girl children from socio-economically disadvantaged communities – Dipta Joshi Nestled in the azure green Lavale valley, 10 km from Pune (pop.7 million), Maharashtra’s second-largest city, is Avasara Academy (estb.2015), a unique class VI-XII day-cum-boarding school for meritorious girl children from socio-economically disadvantaged communities. Affiliated with the UK-based Cambridge Assessment International Education, Avasara Academy, Pune is a need-blind admissions school, i.e, it admits students on merit and provides means-tested scholarships to girls who need them. Students are selected through a rigorous entrance process and taught a unique leadership, entrepreneurship and Indian studies (LEI) curriculum. Founded by Roopa Purushothaman, chief economist and head of policy advocacy at Tata Sons Ltd, the Mumbai-based holding company of the transnational Tata Group (annual revenue: Rs.792,710 crore (2018-19)) and her US-born educationist husband Joseph Cubas, Avasara Academy’s mission statement is “to empower girls of promise to lead lives of distinction and impact”. Currently the school has an enrolment of 393 girl children mentored by 31 teachers. “We have designed a well-rounded curriculum with special emphasis on stimulating intellectual curiosity and developing academic skills required to succeed in world-class universities. Our goal is for Avasara girls to develop the vision and skills required to become entrepreneurs, public change-makers and corporate leaders. The school’s unique LEI curriculum prepares every Avasara student to confront the most pressing challenges in their own lives, their country, and around the world,” says Purushothaman. An alumna of the globally high-ranked Yale University, USA and London School of Economics, Purushothaman began her career with Goldman Sachs, London and achieved international fame for co-authoring a 2003 investment research report predicting growing global power for BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) nations by 2050. In 2006, she moved to India to work with Everstone Capital, a well-reputed private equity and real estate investment firm. Simultaneously, alarmed by research data highlighting poor learning outcomes and low societal status of adolescent girl children and women in India, she became deeply interested in women’s education and began collaborating with NGOs such as Akanksha and Teach for India (TFI), and conducting after-school classes and science camps for socio-economically disadvantaged girl children. In 2015, she teamed up with husband Joseph Cubas, a fellow Yale alum and director of institutional advancement at the American School of Bombay (ASB), to promote a “leadership and educational academy to educate girls of exceptional promise for a lifetime of leadership and contribution to society”. IT major TCS was the first institutional donor which funded the school’s three-storey building in suburban Pune that now also hosts the TCS Centre for Entrepreneurship. This was quickly followed by generous grants from other corporates that have funded the academy’s Nishar Centre for Leadership, Godrej Library, Oberoi Hall, Honeywell Center for Advancing Girls in Science, and the Mittal Centre for India Studies. The school’s Founders Circle comprises highly respected leaders of India Inc including N. Chandrasekaran, chairman, Tata Sons; Nisaba Godrej, executive chairperson, Godrej Consumer…

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Princeton University, USA

Alumni include US Presidents James Madison and Woodrow Wilson and the former first lady Michelle Obama. Currently the university has 5,267 students mentored by 1,289 faculty – Akhila Damodaran Established almost three centuries ago — 19 years before declaration of the United States of America as a sovereign nation — Princeton University (estb.1746) has matured into a globally venerated institution. This vintage private Ivy League research varsity is routinely ranked among the world’s Top 10 and among the Top 3 in the US by most rating agencies. In the annual U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges Rankings, Princeton has been ranked #1 or #2 for almost two decades (2001-2019) and in the latest World University Rankings of the London-based Times Higher Education, it is ranked #6 worldwide. Alumni include US Presidents James Madison and Woodrow Wilson and former first lady Michelle Obama. Currently its four faculties — humanities, engineering, natural and social sciences — provide fouryear liberal arts undergrad, postgraduate and doctoral programmes to 5,267 students mentored by 1,289 faculty. With the rampaging Covid-19 pandemic having hugely disrupted education and forced closure of education institutions globally, in March, Princeton had moved all classes and lectures online. However on July 6, the university issued a statement that undergraduates will be able to return to campus for one semester during the 2020-21 academic year, with first-year students and juniors welcomed back to campus for the fall semester (beginning August 31), and sophomores and seniors for the spring semester. (Since then as we go to press, this plan has been rescinded.) In the case of graduate students, “the university will welcome all its graduate students to campus” in the fall (autumn) with the option to study remotely. “Over the past two months, my colleagues and I have been studying the pandemic and identifying measures we can take to accommodate students on campus. Covid-19 is still a very new disease, and much remains unknown about it. Several points have, however, become clear. Based on the information now available to us, we believe Princeton will be able to offer all of our undergraduate students at least one semester of on-campus education this academic year, but we will need to do much of our teaching online and remotely,” says Christopher L. Eisgruber, president of the university. Princeton. A municipality (estimated pop. 31,187) of New Jersey City, Princeton is the outcome of a 2013 amalgamation of the now-defunct Borough of Princeton with Princeton Township. Almost equidistant from the mega-metros of New York City and Philadelphia, this woody cosmopolitan town offers large well-preserved open spaces and community recreation spaces including bars, restaurants, and shopping areas. Princeton also hosts the McCarter Theatre Center, winner of a Tony Award for the best regional theatre in the US, and the 200-year-old Morven Museum and Garden, which houses unique fine and decorative arts collections. Princeton has a continental climate. Summers are hot and humid with temperatures soaring to 38°C. Winters are cold and windy with temperature dipping to -18°C and copious…

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Central Public School, Udaipur, Rajasthan

Currently celebrating its 31st anniversary, the K-12 Central Public School, Udaipur is ranked among India’s Top 30 co-ed day-cum-boarding schools and # 3 in Rajasthan in the latest EducationWorld India School Rankings 2019-20 – Paromita Sengupta Sited on an eco-friendly three-acre campus on the banks of River Ayad in Udaipur, Central Public School (CPS, estb.1989) has emerged as the most preferred day-cum-boarding school of this charming city of lakes and temples (pop.650,000). Currently celebrating its 31st anniversary, this K-12 school is ranked among the Top 30 co-ed day-cum-boarding schools nationally and #3 in Rajasthan (68 million) in the latest EducationWorld India School Rankings (EWISR) 2019-20. Promoted three decades ago by Alka Sharma — chairperson of the Child Welfare Society, which also runs the city’s Rockwoods High School (estb.2009) and Rockwoods International School (2016) — to offer high-quality English-medium education in then underserved Udaipur, this CBSE-affiliated school provides holistic education rooted in traditional ethics and values to its 2,000 students, including 240 boarders, mentored by 87 teachers. “Our goal is to nurture children in a safe, secure and stimulating learning environment to develop competencies and skills required for success and leadership in the emerging global economy. Therefore, our curriculum integrates rigorous academics with sports, co-curricular and life skills education to produce well-rounded and confident school leavers who are physically strong, mentally alert, emotionally stable, spiritually enlightened and equipped with social and life skills, with excellent command over the English language. Under our unique English champ pedagogy, students in all age groups are regularly tested for creative writing, elocution and debating skills. For our teachers, we routinely conduct in-house workshops to ensure their continuous professional development,” says Sharma, an English postgrad of Rajasthan University, managing director of CPS and recipient of the Union ministry of Communications and IT’s Computer Literacy Excellence President’s Award in 2003. The CPS management takes particular pride in the school’s smooth switch to digital learning after all education institutions countrywide were ordered to shut down on March 25 following outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. “We boldly accepted the challenge to start online classes which we are supplementing with in-house designed worksheets and notes. Nor is our online education restricted to academics. Given our culture of holistic education, students have celebrated Indian festivals apart from World Environment Day, World Heritage Day and International Yoga Day online,” says Sharma. Udaipur’s top-ranked day-cum-boarding school has certainly come a long way since it admitted its first batch of 85 students in a nondescript rented building. Today the school is spread over three green acres hosting four three-storeyed buildings with a built-up area of 60,860 sq. ft. These buildings house 50 air-conditioned Smart classrooms, four state-of-the art science and computer laboratories, hi-tech multimedia, music and art rooms, and separate junior and senior libraries with 10,000 volumes and more than 30 magazines and e-journal subscriptions. Residential accommodation includes separate air-cooled dormitories for 180 boys and 60 girls. “A global outlook and special emphasis on life skills education is a well-established tradition in CPS. In…

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Lawrence University, Wisconsin, USA

Endowed by American philanthropist Amos A. Lawrence (1786-1852), LU is an exclusive undergrad liberal arts and music university routinely ranked among the Top 200 in THE World University Rankings Promoted 173 years ago — a year before the state of Wisconsin was promulgated — Lawrence University (LU, estb.1847) is one of America’s oldest co-ed higher education institutions. A residential liberal arts college and conservatory of music for undergrad students, LU is ranked among the world’s Top 200 higher ed institutions in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2020 and #58 in the National Liberal Arts Colleges 2020 league table of US News and World Report. Endowed by American merchant and philanthropist Amos A. Lawrence (1786-1852), the eponymous university’s main campus is sited in Appleton, Wisconsin with its second 425-acre Bjorklunden Vid Sjon campus perched on the shore of Lake Michigan, two hours northeast of Appleton. Moreover, LU’s international centre is sited in Bloomsbury, London. LU is an exclusively undergraduate liberal arts and music university. It offers its students bachelor of arts and bachelor of music (four-year programmes) and a five-year BA/B.Mus double degree. The liberal arts menu includes 40 academic majors/minors ranging from biomedical ethics to film studies, while LU’s nationally reputed Conservatory of Music offers majors in music education, theory, composition and performance. Currently, the university has 1,500 undergraduates from 50 countries worldwide mentored by 173 faculty, on its muster rolls. Distinguished LU alumni include poet-novelist Marjorie Liu; David Mulford, former US Ambassador to India and movie actor William Dafoe. Appleton. Sited in the mid-west state of Wisconsin overlooking the River Fox, Appleton (pop.74,000) is routinely listed among the most livable — based on quality-of-life indicators — medium-size cities of America. It offers a well-connected road transport system, an international airport, 28 public parks, the Hearthstone Historic House Museum and Performing Arts Centre, Fox Cities Baseball stadium, and hosts offices of large business corporations including Thrivent Financial, Miller Electric and McCain Foods. The city’s College Avenue is lined with a dizzying array of restaurants (from five-star to late-night pizza) and coffee shops. Appleton has a humid continental climate. Summers are warm with the mercury rising to 32.2°C, winters are dry and windy. January is the coldest month in which the mercury could dip to -12°C and snowfall is often 4 ft. deep. Campus facilities. LU’s 84-acre campus in downtown Appleton is bifurcated by River Fox. The north campus hosts academic buildings while the southeast shore campus hosts the university’s impressive sports and athletics facilities. Campus facilities. LU’s 173-years history is showcased in its 1853-built Main Hall listed in America’s National Register of Historic Places. The four main academic buildings feature state-of-the-art classrooms, laboratories, five 100-seat lecture halls and 26 music studios. Other facilities include the Worcester Auditorium, Wriston Art Centre and Warch Campus Centre. Moreover, the Seeley Mudd Library houses a collection of 415,000 books and periodicals, 21,000 musical scores, 20,000 audio recordings and access to electronic resources, images and digital collections. In keeping with the tradition of America’s best universities, LU offers excellent sports infrastructure including the 3,676-seat Banta Bowl football stadium, an eight-lane perma-athletics…

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Bodhi International School, Jodhpur

Promoted a mere six years ago with a first batch of 96 students, the IB (Geneva) and CAIE (UK)-affiliated BIS has quickly established an enviable reputation as the most admired international day school of Rajasthan – Paromita Sengupta An extraordinary latter day success story in K-12 education is Bodhi International School, Jodhpur (BIS, estb.2014). Promoted a mere six years ago by the city-based business tycoon Naresh Bothra, his wife Nitu, brother Manoj and Shailee Bothra and Namit Bhandari, this co-ed K-12 school affiliated with the offshore Geneva-based International Baccalaureate (IB) and Cambridge Assessment International Education (CAIE, UK) exam boards, has quickly established an enviable reputation as the most admired in- ternational day school of the western state of Rajasthan (pop. 68 million). Despite its recent vintage, BIS has been ranked Rajasthan and Jodhpur’s #1 international day school for three years consecutively in the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings. Moreover in 2019-20, the school was also conferred Educa- tionWorld’s Grand Jury Award in the category of career counselling leadership. Currently, this day school sprawled over a six-acre campus with 175,000 sq. ft of built-up area in uptown Jodhpur (pop. 1.1 million), has 693 students (including 259 girls) mentored by 79 well-qualified teachers on its musters. “I am delighted that within three years of admitting our first batch of 96 children, BIS has sufficiently im- pacted Jodhpur’s educators, parents and teachers to establish itself as the city’s #1 international day school. Launching BIS as an international school affiliated with Cambridge International and IB right from the start in a non-metro city, posed for- midable staff recruitment problems. But by casting our net wide to recruit a highly capable principal with international experi- ence, and also investing heavily in teacher training and professional develop- ment, we have been able to maintain high teaching- learning standards,” says Naresh Bothra, promoter- chairman of BIS. A business management alum of Jai Narain Vyas University, Jodhpur with cost and works ac- countancy and company secretary qualifications, Bothra is also the pro- moter-chairman of Bothra Interna- tional, a partnership firm (estb.1994) that exports high-quality customised household and office furniture to 35 countries worldwide. The school’s state-of-the-art carefully landscaped campus (monitored by 24X7 CCTV BIS vista: extraordinary success story. Inset: Dr. Venunadhan Pillai coverage) offers 40 air-conditioned ICT- enabled classrooms, separate labs for computer science (60 terminals), physics, chemistry, biology, STEM, media, language and mathematics. It also Naresh Bothra hosts a knowledge and resource hub housing 9,000 volumes with 18 journal subscriptions, built according to Cambridge International and IB specifications. “Teacher training and professional development to ensure that our faculty delivers best quality internationally benchmarked educa- tion to our children is given high priority in BIS, with workshops conducted through the year to keep our teachers abreast with emerging ICT enabled pedagogies and international practices. Their brief is to nurture our students’ learning Bodhi International School is a K-12 strategies, multiple intelligences and co-educational day school affiliated metacognition. As a result although our first batch of 24 A-level (Plus Two) students is yet to graduate this month, they have already…

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Carnegie Mellon University, USA

Founded 120 years ago by American steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie, who donated 90 percent of his vast fortune to charities and foundations, CMU is one of the world’s most admired institutions of higher ed and research. Founded in 1900 as Carnegie Technical Schools by steel tycoon and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), who during the last 18 years of his life donated 90 percent of his fortune ($350 million or $65 billion (Rs.461,500 crore) at current value) to charities and foundations, Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) has developed into one of the world’s most admired institutions of higher education and research. In the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2020, CMU is ranked #27 and among the global Top 50 in the QS World University Rankings 2020. The US News & World Report in its America’s Best Colleges 2020 league table ranks this 120-year-old varsity among America’s Top 20 with its computer science faculty ranked #1 and undergraduate business and engineering schools ranked #5 and #6 respectively. Located on a 140-acre campus in the steel town of Pittsburgh, CMU’s seven schools and colleges — engineering, arts, computer science, humanities and social sciences, science, business, and information systems and public policy — provide undergraduate, postgrad and doctoral programmes to 14,500 students from 100 countries, mentored by 1,300 faculty. Moreover, the university hosts more than 100 research centres and institutes including the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, Robotics Institute, Human-Computer Interaction Institute and Language Technologies Institute. The CMU alumni roll call features the late John Nash (1994 Nobel prize winner for economics); James Gosling, inventor of programming language Java; Andreas Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems and Charles Geschke, co-founder of Adobe Systems. Pittsburgh. Sited at the confluence of the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio rivers in Pennsylvania state, Pittsburgh (pop.306,000) is famously known as America’s steel city for its 300-plus steel-related businesses. Aka the city of bridges — more than 440 — it’s a major hub of the manufacturing, IT and healthcare industries and hosts eight Fortune 500 companies and six of the Top 300 law firms in the US. Pittsburgh also hosts over 25 colleges and universities including University of Pittsburgh and Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and is ranked among the country’s Top 25 college cities by finance website WalletHub. The second largest city of Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia), Pittsburgh is student-friendly with a good public transportation system, numerous restaurants, shops, parks, malls, coffee shops, pubs and cinemas. The city experiences four distinct seasons: winters are cold, cloudy with moderate snowfall; spring and fall (autumn) are generally mild with moderate sunshine and summers are warm to hot and humid. Winter temperatures average -3oC and summer 28oC. Campus facilities. Sited 5 km from downtown Pittsburgh in the Oakland and Squirrel Hill neighbourhoods, the 140-acre CMU campus is a combination of beaux-arts i.e, neoclassical, and international styles of architecture. Prominent among the campus’ 80 buildings are the Cohon University Centre, Purnell Centre for theatre and drama and Posner Hall for business studies. Distinctive campus landmarks include The Cut, a…

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DAV Model School, Durgapur, West Bengal

During the past 45 years since it admitted its first batch of students, the reputation of this K-12 school, with 5,240 students and 169 teachers on its muster rolls, has spread beyond the steel city. – Baishali Mukherjee Sited on an eight-acre campus in Durgapur (pop.581,000), West Bengal’s steel city, Dayanand Anglo Vedic Model School (DAVMS, estb.1975) is an ISO 9001:2015-certified CBSE-affiliated co-ed day school well reputed for providing nationally benchmarked K-12 education to its 5,240 students mentored by 169 teachers. During the past 45 years since it admitted its first batch, this school’s reputation has spread wide. DAVMS has been conferred the International School Award of the British Council for three consecutive terms (2010-2013, 2014-2017 and 2018-2021) and is listed among the ‘Future 50 Schools Shaping Success’ in India by Fortune magazine (2016-2018). Moreover, it was conferred the Best in Academics (CBSE) and Best in Co-curricular awards in 2014 and 2012 respectively by the Telegraph Education Foundation, Kolkata. DAVMS is a constituent institution of the nationwide DAV schools chain, founded in 1886 by Mahatma Hansraj (1864-1938), a disciple of Arya Samaj founder, Swami Dayanand, and proclaimed the largest non-government education society of India. The DAV society (estb.1886) runs 900 schools countrywide (including 20 in West Bengal), 75 colleges and a university. In 1975, Dr. D. Pal, former chief medical officer of the Durgapur Steel Plant, signed up with the DAV College Managing Committee to promote DAVMS with the objective of providing “quality English-medium education” to children of Durgapur, the third most-populous city of West Bengal after Kolkata and Asansol. The school, managed by the DAV College Management Committee (CMC), admitted its first batch of 39 students and three teachers in 1975. Credit for the excellent public notices, awards and encomiums that DAVMS has received over the past 45 years is universally given to the CMC’s commitment to delivery of a balanced blend of contemporary pedagogies, academic rigour and values-based education. “In DAVMS, we provide modern education rooted in Indian values at affordable price. Our curriculum and pedagogies encourage children to develop critical thinking, creativity, problem-solving and knowledge application skills as well as character development. The DAV model of holistic K-12 education stimulates the mental, physical, social and emotional development of children,” says Papiya Mukherjee, principal of the school. An alumna of Ranchi University and a committed DAV educationist, Mukherjee started her career in 1995 in the DAV Public School, Hehal (Jharkhand) and DAV School, Bistupur (Jamshedpur), before she was appointed principal of DAVMS, Durgapur in 2008. Mukherjee believes this school’s excellent reputation in Durgapur and West Bengal is attributable to CMC’s high emphasis on training and development of DAVMS’ 169 teachers, enabling them to deliver a mix of traditional and experiential pedagogies to boost children’s learning outcomes. In 2019, 177 of the 326 students who wrote the class X CBSE exam, averaged 90 percent-plus. Ditto 182 of 454 who wrote the class XII board exam. Moreover, 80 students cleared the IIT-JEE Mains and 20 the NEET exams. And for…

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Brookings Institution India Centre

The India centre of the US-based Brookings Institution (estb.1916), routinely ranked the world’s #1 think tank, BIIC (estb. 2013) has quickly established an excellent reputation in India. The Washington DC-based Brookings Institution (BI, estb.1916) is the world’s oldest, richest (annual revenue: $102 million or Rs.726 crore) and top-ranked think tank. This highly influential public policy moulding institute renowned for its deeply researched foreign policy, economics, development, governance and metropolitan policy studies, has 18 centres including three overseas (India, China and Qatar). In the University of Pennsylvania’s Think Tank and Civil Societies Programme (TTCSP) — an annual international survey covering 6,600 think tanks worldwide — BI is routinely top ranked. “For over 100 years, the Brookings Institution has helped develop critical public policy solutions in response to some of society’s most intractable problems. We continue to be one of the top-rated and most respected think tanks globally, advancing the public good in a dynamic geopolitical environment shaped by disruptions to the liberal world order, bifurcation of the international system and political fragmentation at all levels of governance,” writes John R. Allen, president of Brookings, in its annual report 2019. BI was founded in 1916 as the Institute for Government Research by philanthropist Robert S. Brookings (1850-1932) to analyse and debate national public policies. In 1927, it was merged with the Institute of Economics (estb.1922) and the Robert Brookings Graduate School (1924) to emerge in its current avatar. Sited on Washington’s Think Tank Row, which houses a cluster of research institutes on or around Massachusetts Avenue, BI has over 300 scholars producing high-quality research on a wide range of public policy, economic and governance issues on its payroll. It’s well-known that several deeply researched studies conducted by this century-old think tank have formed the bedrock of major globally impactful American policies including the Marshall Plan and US’ Tax Reform Act, 1986 and have heavily influenced homeland security and intelligence policy initiatives since the terrorist attacks on New York’s twin towers in 2001. Notable Brookings scholars include former US secretary of education Arne Duncan, former US Council of Economic Advisers’ chairmen Jason Furman and Martin Neil Baily, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne and William Galston of the Wall Street Journal. In 2013, Brookings established its Brookings Institution India Centre (BIIC) chaired by Vikram Singh Mehta, an alum of Oxford and Tufts universities with a distinguished service record in several European petroleum companies before he retired as chairman of the Shell Group of companies in India in 2012. Housed in a spacious 7,000 sq. ft office in Delhi’s upscale diplomatic enclave of Chanakyapuri, BIIC currently has 30 research staff. UPenn’s TTCSP 2018 ranks BIIC #24 in its league table of think tanks in India, China, Japan and South Korea. “When the idea for Brookings India was mooted, not a few Indian policymakers and industrialists questioned the role of think tanks, querying why they are useful or necessary. Today, there is widespread awareness of the valuable role think tanks play in initiating policy research and as…

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JIS University, Kolkata

Within a short span of four years, this young institution of higher education – JIS University, Kolkata, has earned a good reputation for providing industry-connected curriculums that combine academic theory, hands-on learning, research and internships – Baishali Mukherjee Sited on a green environment-friendly 10-acre campus in the leafy Agarpara suburb of Kolkata (pop.15 million), the private JIS University (JISU, estb.2015) has quickly blossomed into a full-fledged professional education varsity with seven faculties offering 49 study programmes to 3,200 students, including 60 from abroad mentored by 150 full-time and 30 visiting faculty. Established by a special JIS University Act 2014 of the West Bengal legislative assembly and inaugurated with pomp and fanfare by chief minister Mamata Banerjee in 2015, JISU is the latest and most ambitious venture of the JIS Group of Educational Initiatives (JISGEI, estb.1998), the education division of the JIS Group (1979), named after its late founder-chairman Jodh Ishwar Singh (1920-2018). Currently, JISGEI comprises 27 education institutions in West Bengal, one in Bihar and three in Jharkhand, offering 126 study programmes to 36,000 students. “JISU’s prime objective is to provide West Bengal’s students community high-quality professional education in disciplines such as engineering and technology, pharmacy, management, law, social sciences and education. It’s a matter of satisfaction that within a short span of four years, this young institution of higher education has earned a good reputation for delivering industry-connected curriculums that combine academic theory, project-based and hands-on learning, research and internships. Our first batch of industry-ready graduates has been enthusiastically welcomed by higher education institutions and corporates in India and abroad,” says Sardar Taranjit Singh, a commerce alumnus of Calcutta University, chancellor of JISU and incumbent managing director of JISGEI. Currently, JISU’s seven faculties — sciences, engineering, biotechnology, juridical sciences, pharmaceutical technology, commerce and management studies, education and hotel and hospitality administration — offer 19 undergraduate, 20 postgrad and ten Ph D study programmes including two dual/integrated degrees (BBA-MBA and BBA-LLB). Study programmes in yoga and naturopathy, languages (French and English) are also available to students. Despite its young age, JISU has already won impressive laurels. They include: the India-Africa ICT Award of Excellence 2017 at India-Africa Summit held in New Delhi, Best University in East India 2018 title of the Centre for Education Growth and Research, Delhi and the Best Upcoming University of Eastern India for ‘recruiting international students’ at the Global India Education Forum 2018, held in Switzerland. Committed to constructing a globally benchmarked university, the JISGEI management has invested heavily in JISU’s infrastructure development. Its 10-acre wi-fi enabled campus boasts a futuristic lake-facing air-conditioned eight-storeyed academic building (built-up area of 170,000 sq. ft) housing 74 ICT-enabled classrooms, 11 seminar halls with 1,800-seats capacity, well-equipped computer science, pharmacy, physics, chemistry, geology, microbiology, biotechnology, remote sensing, data science and bioformatics labs, three state-of-the-art libraries and two reading rooms furbished with 12,000 volumes, 40 print and 40 e-journals, a 200-seat auditorium, spacious cafeteria and separate hostels for 300 men and 200 women students. Moreover, unlike the majority of the country’s…

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University of Portsmouth, UK

Conferred university status in 1992, UoP is ranked among UK’s Top 50 universities by the Times Higher Education and is highly reputed for study programmes in democratic citizenship; sustainability and the environment- Shraddha Goled Set within a 52-acre campus in the eponymous port city, the University of Portsmouth (UoP, estb.1908) is a publicly-funded higher education institution widely acclaimed for teaching and research excellence. UoP is ranked #21 in the UK by the Guardian University Guide 2020; #49 in the Times Higher Education UK University Rankings 2019, and among the ‘Top 150 Under 50’ varsities of the world in the QS Young University Rankings 2020. Moreover, as per the National Student Survey 2018, UoP is ranked among the top 15 percent of UK universities for student satisfaction. Founded as the Municipal College and Public Library in 1908, UoP was conferred university status in 1992. Currently, the university’s five faculties — humanities and social sciences; technology; science and health; business and law; creative and cultural industries — offer over 190 undergraduate and 200-plus postgraduate study programmes to 23,000 students mentored by 2,600 full-time faculty. In particular, the university is highly reputed for its study programmes in democratic citizenship; future and emerging technologies; health and wellbeing; security and risk; sustainability and the environment. Portsmouth. Spread across Portsea island in Hampshire, an hour’s drive from London, Portsmouth (pop. 205,400) is a major naval base of the Royal Navy with a rich nautical history. The Portsmouth skyline features the tall masts of historic warships, the Spinnaker Tower, and Portsmouth Historic Dockyard which houses the National Museum of the Royal Navy, the wooden warship HMS Victory, on which Lord Nelson died in the Battle of Trafalgar, HMS Warrior 1860 and the Tudor era Mary Rose. Other major attractions include the house (now a museum) where renowned author Charles Dickens was born, and Southsea Castle, an artillery fort originally commissioned by King Henry VIII. The only city in the UK whose population density exceeds London’s, Portsmouth buzzes with bars, restaurants, theatres, and shops. Recently the British Broadcasting Corp ranked Portsmouth among UK’s best cities for youth under-26 years. Sited on the southern coast of England, this port city is blessed with a mild oceanic climate. Maximum summer temperature is 26°C which drops to -8°C in winter. Campus facilities. UoP is spread across two campuses — Guildhall and Langstone. The main Guildhall campus hosts state-of-the-art academic, laboratory, sports and performing arts facilities. Campus landmarks include the 24-hour University Library housing 380,000 printed volumes, 600,000 e-books and 55,000 e-journals; the Future Technology Centre for STEM students and researchers; Forensic Innovation Centre, UK’s first university-based operational police forensic research facility; recreational student hubs such as The Hub, Student Union Bar & Third Space; and Eldon Building, the university’s art and culture centre, among other landmarks. Moreover, there are several students’ clubs and societies for art and design, gaming, international development, photography, sub-aqua, theatre and water polo, among other extra-curricular activities The Langdon campus houses the university’s sports arena featuring a full-size hockey…

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Sharanya Narayani International School, Bengaluru

Within a short span of four years, this day-cum-boarding school affiliated with the most respected international exam boards has quickly made a favourable impression on the parents community of the IT city – Shraddha Goled Sited on a sprawling 60-acre campus shaded by eucalyptus groves in east Bangalore’s fast-growing industrial suburb of Hoskote, the new-age Sharanya Narayani International School (SNIS, estb.2015) had several good reasons to celebrate its fourth anniversary on July 1. The school’s first batch of class X students to write the IGCSE (class X) exam of the Cambridge Assessment International Education, UK, recorded excellent grades with 60 percent awarded A and A*. Moreover, within a short span of four years, this K-12 day-cum-boarding school affiliated with Cambridge International, UK and International Baccalaureate (IB), Geneva — the world’s most respected international school-leaving exam boards — has quickly made a favourable impression on the hi-tech garden city’s upwardly mobile parents community — mainly engaged in new digital technologies — for providing rigorous academics, international pedagogies, excellent pastoral care, sports and co-curricular education to 260 students including 120 girls and 80 boarders. SNIS is ranked among India’s Top 15 international day-cum-boarding schools and #6 in Karnataka and Bangalore in the latest EducationWorld India School Rankings 2019-20. SNIS is promoted by the Narayani Group of Educational Institutions Charitable Trust registered in 2012 by B.A. Gopala Reddy, a real estate entrepreneur and family, to commemorate the memory of their matriarch, the late Narayani Abbaiah Reddy. “My parents were not formally educated but understood the value and significance of education and they struggled and succeeded in educating all their five children. All SNIS trustees, myself included, are first-generation learners and owe our success to their hard work and determination. SNIS is a tribute to their unshakeable belief in the transformative power of education,” says Nagaraj Reddy, trustee and managing director of SNIS. An alumnus of South Dakota State University, USA, Nagaraj served as an IT consultant in blue-chip multinational companies in the US (Johnson & Johnson and Oracle) before returning to India in 2008 with wife Lakshmi to promote “a progressive new-genre international K-12 school with a difference”. According to Lakshmi Reddy, trustee and director of academic programmes, SNIS has been designed as a “world-class school to provide balanced and rounded education to enable students to think, inquire, act and reflect”. “We have taken great pains to build a contemporary ICT-enabled campus, invested liberally in teacher training, curriculum development and providing a wide range of sports and co-curricular activities. Most importantly, SNIS is a ‘thinking school’ where teachers encourage and nurture individual thinking and creativity. We are one of few schools in the country to host a full-fledged HOTS (higher-order thinking skills) lab for training primary and middle school students to develop their cognitive skills,” says Lakshmi Reddy, a highly qualified business management postgraduate of the University of Houston (USA) with work experience in reputed multinationals (Oracle and Stewart Title) in the US. To nurture and develop self-driven thinking students, SNIS provides a carefully…

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Kansas State University, USA

Spread across four campuses in the agriculture heartland of the US, K-State is ranked among the country’s Top 200 national universities and Top 100 public varsities in the Best Colleges Rankings 2019 of the US News & World Report Founded in 1863, Kansas State University (aka K-State) is one of America’s oldest and top-ranked publicly-funded higher education institutions. Originally founded as the Kansas State Agricultural College, one of the country’s pioneer land-grant universities and the first public institution of higher learning in Kansas state (pop. 2.9 million), it was conferred university status in 1959. Spread across four campuses in the agriculture heartland of the US, K-State is ranked among the country’s Top 200 national universities, and Top 100 public varsities in the Best Colleges Rankings 2019 of the US News & World Report. According to a university spokesperson, 96 percent of its bachelor’s degree graduates and 97 percent of postgraduates are employed or enrolled in further education within six months of graduation. Since Kansas State Agricultural College admitted its first batch of 52 students in September 1863, the university has come a long way. Currently its four campuses including the main campus in Manhattan; K-State Polytechnic in Salina; Innovation campus in Olathe and an online Global campus, offer more than 250 undergrad and 165 graduate programmes to 22,000 students mentored by 1,437 full-time faculty. In particular, the university is highly reputed for its agriculture, biodefense and bioresearch study and research programmes and hosts the spectacular Kansas State University Gardens, an on-campus horticulture display garden that is also a learning laboratory for students and the public. Manhattan. Sited at the confluence of the Kansas and Big Blue rivers, Manhattan (pop. 53,281) — nicknamed the Little Apple — is a college town famous for its K-State and Manhattan Christian colleges. The city was ranked #1 on the list for best ‘town-gown relationships’ in 2018 by The Princeton Review and among the ‘Top 10 Places to Retire’ by Money magazine. Because of its large student population, Manhattan offers an active nightlife, with bars, restaurants, theatres and shops ubiquitous in the downtown area. Other major attractions include the Manhattan Town Centre and Fort Riley, base of the 1st Infantry Division of the US Army. Little Apple’s climate is continental with hot, humid summers and cold, dry winters. The maximum summer temperature is 32°C and could drop to -18°C in winter. Campus facilities. The sprawling 2,320-acre Manhattan campus hosts state-of-the-art academic, laboratory, research, sports and residential facilities. Campus landmarks include the Hale library, the oldest library of K-State built in 1927; Marianna Kistler Beach Museum which has a permanent art collection of 6,500 artefacts; Bramlage Coliseum; KSU Historic Costume and Textiles Museum; K-State Insect Zoo, and the Chang, Chapman, and Kemper galleries, featuring faculty and students art. In keeping with the tradition of America’s globally admired universities, sport facilities are extensive. The Chester E. Peters Recreation Complex comprises fitness areas, indoor tracks, basketball courts, two 25-yard swimming pools and cardio and weight rooms. Additionally, there…

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The Green Acres Academy, Mumbai

The co-ed day TGAA, Chembur (estb. 2013) has quickly established a reputation as a progressive 21st century school providing students well-balanced child-centred education employing the latest IT-enabled pedagogies – Dipta Joshi Nestling in a leafy green oasis in the Chembur suburb of Mumbai, is the futuristic campus of The Green Acres Academy (TGAA, estb.2013), promoted by Rohan Parikh, founder-trustee of the Acres Foundation — registered in 2012 by the Mumbai-based Apurva Natvar Parikh (ANP) Group with business interests in transport, real estate and hospitality. Since TGAA admitted its first batch of 14 students in 2013, this K-X co-ed day school affiliated with the Delhi-based Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) has quickly earned a reputation for providing holistic ICT-enabled education rooted in Indian values to its 2,047 students including 927 girl children. In the Times School Survey 2018, TGAA was conferred the ‘Fastest emerging National Curriculum School in Mumbai’ award. In 2017, TGAA was conferred the EducationWorld Grand Jury Award in the ‘new technologies usage’ category. “The institutional objective of TGAA is to provide a safe, secure and tech-enabled learning environment for children through our unique 8-4-8 curriculum. Based on eight core principles for students, four for parents and teachers, and eight for the school, we ensure that all children develop eight essential competencies — academics, sports, music, logic and debate and arts and crafts among others — required for success and leadership in our rapidly globalising world. By also spelling out the responsibilities of parents, teachers and the school, we are well-prepared to nurture physically strong, emotionally stable, free-thinking, confident and competent graduates equipped to assume leadership positions anywhere in the world,” says Rohan Parikh, director of TGAA. An economics graduate of the Wharton Business School, USA with an MBA awarded by INSEAD, France, and a decade of business and management experience in ANP Group companies, in 2013 Parikh promoted TGAA and simultaneously signed up for a Masters in education at the renowned Johns Hopkins University, USA. Unsurprisingly, given his blue-chip education and organisation management experience, TGAA has quickly established a reputation for being a progressive 21st century school providing its students balanced child-centric education employing latest IT-enabled pedagogies and well-trained teachers. With public response to TGAA “exceeding expectations,” Parikh has expanded the group’s footprint and promoted TGAA schools in Mulund, Mumbai (estb.2015), affiliated with CISCE and TGAA, Pune (CBSE). Moreover in July, the ANP Group’s Cambridge International (UK)-affiliated Seven Rivers International School, Mumbai, admitted its first batch of 57 K-class II children currently studying on the TGAA Chembur campus. Invested with Parikh’s storehouse of business management and education experience, the flagship TGAA, Chembur, housed in a cluster of five earthquake-resistant seven-storeyed buildings with large colourful windows and 60 double-height zero-echo Smart classrooms featuring light-shelves that stream abundant sunlight and ventilation, is setting new standards in K-X education. The state-of-the-art infrastructure includes three 21st century science labs plus a hi-tech multipurpose laboratory, two well-equipped computer labs, a teachers’ resource centre and music and art rooms. The library houses…

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University of British Columbia, Canada

A publicly-funded university, University of British Columbia, Canada boasts three former prime ministers of Canada, incumbent PM Justin Trudeau, 71 Rhodes scholars, 256 Royal Society of Canada members and 65 Olympic Games medal winners among its alumni Spread across two campuses — Vancouver and Okanagan Valley — in Canada, the University of British Columbia, Canada (UBC, estb. 1915) is consistently ranked among the world’s Top 50 institutions of higher education. The London-based Times Higher Education (THE) ranks UBC #37 in its latest World University Rankings 2019, while in the Academic Ranking of World Universities of the Shanghai Jio Tong University, it’s ranked #43. A publicly-funded university, UBC (annual budget: $2.6 billion or Rs.13,579 crore) boasts a host of impressive alumni. Among them three former prime ministers of Canada, incumbent PM Justin Trudeau, 71 Rhodes scholars, 256 Royal Society of Canada members and 65 Olympic Games medal winners. UBC’s eight faculties provide a wide range of undergraduate and postgrad programmes to its 65,012 students, including 16,188 international scholars from 156 countries, mentored by 16,089 faculty. The university’s departments of life sciences (#26), clinical, pre-clinical and health (30), social sciences (29) and business and economics (25) are ranked among the Top 30 worldwide by THE/ QS. Also a respected beehive of research and development, UBC (annual R&D budget: $658 million) has signed 1,109 agreements with government and non-profit organisations, and 1,375 research projects are being implemented with industry partners and 207 companies. Vancouver. The most populous city (2 million) of British Columbia, Canada’s western province, Vancouver is widely admired as one of the world’s most scenic port cities and consistently ranked among the Top 5 cities worldwide for livability and quality of life. Also ranked #17 in the league table of the world’s best student cities by QS rankings 2019, Vancouver hosts art galleries, theatres, a wide array of restaurants and sporting hubs (the city hosted the 2010 Winter Olympics and 2010 Winter Paralympics). Vancouver has a moderate, oceanic climate. Protected by mountains and warmed by Pacific ocean currents, it’s one of the warmest cities in Canada with temperatures in summer averaging 22°-14° C and 14°-8° C in winter. Vancouver also has a reputation for rain — it’s the 9th rainiest urban habitation of Canada. Campus facilities. A half-hour bus ride from downtown, UBC’s 400-hectare Vancouver campus is surrounded by dense forest on three sides and ocean on the fourth. This century-old campus, which has experienced a $1.5 billion (Rs.10,329 crore) infrastructure upgrade in recent years, hosts state-of-art facilities for academic, sports and co-curricular education. Campus landmarks include Triumf, a world-renowned laboratory for subatomic physics; Museum of Anthropology, the country’s largest teaching museum; the Chan Centre for Performing Arts; Beaty Biodiversity Museum, which houses Canada’s largest blue whale skeleton; a world-class UBC Botanical Garden; Centre for Plant Research and Centre for Interactive Research in Sustainability. The Vancouver campus hosts 44,000 undergraduate and 10,000 postgraduate students. UBC’s Okanagan campus inaugurated in 2005, is purpose-built for the 21st century and also provides its 9,120…

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Vishal Bharti Public School, PaschimVihar, Delhi

The alma mater of Virat Kohli, captain of India’s cricket team, Vishal Bharti Public School, PaschimVihar has earned a good reputation for providing well-balanced, 21st century academic, co-curricular & sports education- Autar Nehru Nestled within west Delhi’s residential suburb of Paschim Vihar is the 1.5-acre fully air-conditioned campus of the CBSE-affiliated Vishal Bharti Public School (VBPS, estb.1989). Over the past three decades it has earned a good reputation for providing well-balanced, 21st century academic, sports and co-curricular education. In the latest EW India School Rankings 2018-19, VBPS is ranked among the Top 35 co-ed day schools of the national capital. Virat Kohli, captain of India’s cricket team, is this school’s most famous alum. Initially conceptualised as a modest neighbourhood K-VII education centre by S.K. Sachdeva, founder-publisher of Competition Success Review magazine among other education businesses, Vishal Bharti Public School, Paschim Vihar was acquired in 2004 by the Modern Delhi Citizens Educational Society founded by Delhi-based businessmen Mahavir and Sunil Goel. Since then it has evolved into a full-fledged K-12 school with an enrolment of 1,900 students and 82 teachers on its muster rolls. “Our prime objective is to provide a safe, joyful and intellectually stimulating environment to nurture confident and competent global citizens. The school’s curriculum is delivered by well-trained teachers utilising contemporary pedagogies which are inquiry-based, experiential and collaborative to develop students’ communication, critical thinking, collaboration and creative intelligences. Moreover, we are fully committed to developing our students’ sense of responsibility towards the community and the environment,” says Mahavir Goel, chairperson of Vishal Bharti Public School, Paschim Vihar. To fulfill the Modern Society’s objectives, the VBPS management has generously invested in providing the school with modern, enabling academic, sports and co-curricular education infrastructure. The school’s purpose-built 1.5-acre campus hosts a four-storeyed building housing the junior, primary, secondary and senior secondary wings with 52 air-conditioned Smart classrooms, state-of-the-art science labs, two well-equipped computer laboratories and a hi-tech maths lab, music and art studio, a 200-seat multipurpose hall and a well-stocked library with 13,000 volumes and resource materials. Moreover for the past three years, the school has been awarded the Green School certificate of the Delhi-based Centre for Science & Environment for its solar energy roof panels and rainwater harvesting initiatives. VBPS is also a recipient of the British Council’s International School Award 2013-16. Rachna Jain, principal of VBPS, believes the school’s defining features are its focus on holistic education and continuous teacher professionals development. “Inspired by our motto ‘excellence through education’, we make every effort to provide children a balanced blend of traditional and contemporary education experiences which integrate academic rigour with sports, co-curricular and community service activities to develop socially responsible life-long learners. Moreover, the management invests substantially in continuous professional development of our 82 teachers by organising regular seminars and workshops,” says Jain, an alumna of Delhi University who served in Vibgyor and Podar schools before being appointed principal of Vishal Bharti Public School, Paschim Vihar earlier this year. Unsurprisingly, sports education is a high priority with expert…

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Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland

Established by Royal Charter in 1784, Royal College of Surgeons has pioneered numerous medical breakthroughs including Ireland’s first anaesthesia surgery and Britain’s first women graduates in medicine and surgery Sited in the heart of Dublin’s fair city, the Royal College of Surgeons, Eire/Ireland (RCSI, estb.1784) is one of the world’s oldest and most-respected medical and health sciences education and research universities. The London-based rating agencies Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) and Times Higher Education (THE) rank RCSI among the world’s Top 250 universities and Top 175 higher ed institutions for clinical, pre-clinical and health sciences education. Established by Royal Charter 235 years ago, RCSI has pioneered numerous medical breakthroughs including Ireland’s first surgery under anaesthesia (1847). Among its 18,000 alumni from 97 countries are Britain’s first women graduates in medicine and surgery. Currently, RCSI provides undergraduate and postgrad programmes in medicine, pharmacy, physiotherapy, nursing and mid-wifery to 3,781 students, including 2,259 undergraduates from 60 countries. A private independent medical higher ed institution, RCSI has four campuses overseas in Bahrain, Dubai and Malaysia. Dublin. The administrative capital of Eire, Dublin (pop. 1.6 million) is 50 minutes by air from London. Its widely advertised charm is that while it offers all amenities of a national capital, it retains its distinctive small town ambience and has been voted among the world’s Top 10 safe cities in the Global Peace Index 2018 of the Sydney-based Institute for Economics and Peace. The epicentre of Irish literature and culture, it offers students a wide option of art galleries, museums, theatres, shops, restaurants, nightclubs and zoological gardens. A coastal city, Dublin is also a university town with a fine tradition of learning and scholarship. With its student population of 75,000, it was ranked among the Top 10 cities for international student satisfaction by the online Study Portals in 2016-17. Dublin has a mild, oceanic climate. The average winter temperature is 8°C which rises to 18°C in summer. Campus facilities. Located in downtown Dublin, RCSI’s campuses in St. Stephen’s Green, York Street, and Beaumont Hospital, house state-of-the-art medical education facilities and labs cheek-by-jowl with historic heritage buildings. In particular, the RCSI campus on St. Stephen’s Green is an impressive heritage landmark hosting life-sized marble statues and paintings by famous artists, including Irish portraitist William Orpen. The university’s historic anatomy room has hosted students since 1812. The York Street campus hosts Europe’s largest and most advanced clinical healthcare simulation facility — a 12,000 sq. ft multi-disciplinary National Surgical and Clinical Skills Centre. This first-of-its-genre (outside the United States) medical care centre designed to mirror a full-fledged hospital, is equipped with surgical and training suites, clinical skills labs, a mock operating theatre and clinical training wards. It also hosts a specialist health sciences library. Beaumont hospital, 5 km north of city centre, is RCSI’s 820-bed teaching hospital with 54 medical specialities units and 3,000 students and employees. It also hosts a Clinical Research Centre, the first to be established on a hospital site in Ireland. RCSI has recently added another 30,000 sq.…

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Sir Padampat Singhania Education Centre, Kanpur

Over the past 36 years since this CBSE-affiliated K-12 co-ed day school was promoted, it has risen high in the estimation of the public and is ranked #1 in Kanpur in EWISR 2018-19 – Paromita Sengupta Occupying pride of place in the Kamla Nagar township of the bustling city of Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh — purpose-built for employees of the well-known JK Group of companies which has interests in cement, tyres, paper and computer software industries — is the verdant 11-acre campus of the Sir Padampat Singhania Education Centre (SPSEC). Promoted by the late Govind Hari Ji Singhania (1937-2014) to commemorate the extraordinary contributions of his industrialist-philanthropist father Sir Padampat Singhania (1905-1979) to Indian society, SPSEC admitted its first batch of 250 students mentored by 11 teachers in 1982. Since then, this CBSE-affiliated K-12 co-ed day school has earned an excellent reputation in Kanpur (pop. 2.9 million) and in Uttar Pradesh — India’s most populous (215 million) state — for providing hard-to-get 21st century school education to its 2,900 students including 1,000 girl children tutored by 153 teachers. In the latest EW India School Rankings 2018-19, SPSEC is ranked Kanpur’s #1 co-ed day school and #4 in Uttar Pradesh. “The objective of SPSEC is to provide a safe, secure and stimulating learning environment for children to develop competencies and skills essential for success and leadership in the emerging globalised economy. Our curriculum which balances academics with sports and co-curricular education, enables nurturing outward looking school-leavers who are physically strong, mentally alert, intellectually sharp, emotionally stable and spiritually enlightened to serve and give back to society with determination, dedication and discipline,” says Manorama Govind Hari Singhania, who took over as chairperson of SPSEC after her husband’s demise five years ago. Among the first modern private schools promoted in Kanpur after independence, SPSEC has been generously funded by the Singhania clan and is fully equipped to provide contemporary academic and sports education to all students. With a built-up area of 6,500 sq. metres, the school’s wi-fi enabled campus hosts separate junior, primary, secondary and senior secondary buildings which house 81 air-conditioned Smart classrooms, five state-of-the-art science and five well-equipped computer laboratories, a hi-tech English language lab apart from multimedia rooms, teachers’ resource centre, music and art rooms. Together the junior and senior libraries house 32,570 volumes and subscribe to 35 magazines and e-journals. Moreover, the school’s carefully landscaped Navgrah Vatika, Buddha Vatika and Lady Anusiya botanical gardens (dedicated to the memory of Govind Hari Singhania’s mother) and a bio-technology museum provide students excellent outdoor and experiential learning opportunities. “Our focus in SPSEC is to provide superior, well-rounded education which integrates academic rigour with sports, co-curricular and community service activities with special emphasis on values and life skills education. Therefore, our expertly designed pedagogies and curriculums are way ahead of the prescribed syllabus. For instance, recently we’ve introduced a new computer coding curriculum for classes I-VIII; a ‘speakers corner-expression unrestricted’ to develop children’s public speaking skills, and outdoor classes to explore new ideas and…

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City University of Hong Kong

A distinguishing feature of CityU is its international outlook and outreach. 41 percent of its 20,000 enrolled students are from 30 countries and 60 percent of faculty is from abroad City University of Hong Kong (aka CityU, estb. 1994) is a publicly-funded teaching and research varsity steadily rising in the annual World University Rankings (WUR) of the authoritative London-based higher education institution rating and ranking agencies Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) and Times Higher Education (THE). In the QS WUR 2019, CityU is ranked #55 worldwide and #8 in Asia. Times Higher Education ranks the 25-year-old CityU #110 in its latest WUR 2019. Moreover in its Best Global Universities 2019 league table, US News and World Report ranks CityU’s study programmes in engineering #15, computer science #11, and maths #59 worldwide. Established in 1982 as the City Polytechnic of Hong Kong on the lines of the island’s first poly — Hong Kong Polytechnic — to provide professional education, CityU was conferred university status in 1994. Currently, CityU’s 10 schools and colleges offer 130 English-medium programmes in its 27 academic faculties. A distinguishing feature of CityU is its international outlook and outreach. 41 percent of its 20,000 enrolled students are from 30 countries worldwide. Its 1,488-strong faculty is also very international — 60 percent of professors are from abroad. Moreover, the university has signed agreements with 370 corporates in 43 countries enabling 65 percent of its students to avail overseas internship opportunities. Hong Kong. Sited on China’s southern coast, Hong Kong (pop. 7.4 million) is one of two special administrative regions of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the other being neighbouring Macau. A former British colony, Hong Kong was returned to PRC in 1997 after 156 years of British rule. Empowered by a low-crime and low-corruption environment, Hong Kong has developed into a premier global business and financial entrepot, serving as the bridge between multinational corporations and mainland China. It is the world’s freest economy and fourth largest financial hub with 3,800 registered multinational companies doing business in the region. With four top-ranked universities, an international culture (620,000 expat managers), high employer activity and affordable living cost, HK is ranked #12 in the QS Best Student Cities 2018 guide. A melting pot of several cultures, where Chinese temples are juxtaposed with towering steel-and-glass skyscrapers, this island city is famous for its street as well as high-end shopping. From the lively nightlife of Lan Kwai Fong to long distance walking trails in the New Territories, Hong Kong offers students an exciting mix of leisure and entertainment options. The climate is humid, sub-tropical with temperatures ranging from 10°C in winter to 33°C in summer. Campus facilities. Sprawled across a 38-acre green campus in the heart of the Kowloon peninsula, the modernist CityU campus provides state-of-the art academic, laboratory, residential and sports facilities. Campus highlights and landmarks include the Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre, State Key Laboratory of Millimetre Waves, State Key Laboratory of Marine Pollution and Biofuel Research Centre. Moreover the striking Run…

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Learning Paths School, Mohali

In the latest EducationWorld India School Rankings 2018-19, 12,214 sample respondents ranked Learning Paths School (estb. 2008) #1 in Mohali and #7 in Punjab in the co-ed day schools category – Paromita Sengupta Sited on a compact 2.75-acre modern campus in Mohali’s Sector 67, next door to the Mohali campus of the top-ranked Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, Learning Paths School (formerly The Millennium School, estb.2008) has quickly earned a good reputation in this fast-developing IT city for providing contemporary ICT-enabled K-12 education. In the latest EducationWorld India School Rankings 2018-19, 12,214 sample respondents ranked Learning Paths School (LPS) #1 in Mohali and #7 in Punjab in the co-ed day schools category. Moreover, a specially constituted Grand Jury certified LPS for innovative teaching practices. Promoted by the Haryana-based Western Education Society (regd.2005), this CBSE-affiliated co-ed day school admitted its first batch of 150 students in 2008. Since then, enrolment has risen to 1,760 students mentored by 110 teachers. “LPS was established to transform children into responsible, independent thinkers and life-long learners with the knowledge, attitude and courage to succeed in an ever changing world. Therefore right from inception, we have innovated teaching-learning practices that go well beyond the prescribed CBSE curriculum. For instance, we are the first school countrywide to provide industry-aligned commerce and humanities education in classes XI-XII through our Agile Personalization Framework initiative,” says Robin Aggarwal, founder-director of LPS. A law and business management alum of Panjab and Boston universities, Aggarwal acquired a decade’s useful business management experience with blue-chip multinationals (Boston Scientific) in India and abroad (State Street Bank) before he co-promoted LPS 11 years ago. The LPS management’s emphasis on innovative pedagogies has had a beneficial impact on students’ learning outcomes. In 2019, of the 45 class XII students who wrote the CBSE board exam, six averaged more than 90 percent. Its first batch of class XII students who graduated in 2018 have been readily accepted into reputed institutions in India and abroad including Ashoka and Panjab universities (India), Purdue University (USA), Calgary and University of British Columbia (Canada). “It’s deeply satisfying that LPS has evolved into a progressive institution providing excellent academic and co-curricular education with strong emphasis on values and life skills development. Our curriculum and pedagogies are designed to accommodate children’s differing learning styles and test their multiple intelligences. However LPS’ greatest strength is our team of 110 teachers who are continuously upgrading their skills and expertise in regular training workshops,” says Nutan Budhiraja, an alumna of Delhi University who brought over two decades of teaching and administrative experience in Delhi’s Miranda and Indraprastha colleges, the Middle East International School, Doha and Yadavindra Public School, Mohali into LPS, when she was appointed principal in 2018. Students’ learning capabilities are enabled by the school’s excellent infrastructure designed for academics, co-curricular and sports education. Its wi-fi enabled campus hosts a futuristic three-storeyed building with 58 well-ventilated classrooms furbished with smart boards and projectors, two well-stocked libraries housing 10,000 volumes with 40 journal subscriptions, two state-of-the-art…

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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The most prestigious of three institutions under the University of Illinois system, UIUC is rated #13 among US public universities by U.S. News & World Report Founded in 1867, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) is an American public research varsity consistently ranked among the world’s Top 100 by reputed international rating agencies. The London-based Times Higher Education ranks UIUC #50 in its World University Rankings 2019, and Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) #71 in its 2019 global league table. The largest and most prestigious of three institutions under the University of Illinois system — the other two are Chicago and Springfield — UIUC is also rated #13 among US public universities by U.S. News & World Report in its America’s Best Colleges Rankings 2019. Moreover its study programmes in library and information science and condensed matter physics are ranked #1 in the US. Sited in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana (total pop. 207,000) in the state of Illinois, UIUC is one of 37 public land-grant institutions established by President Abraham Lincoln under the Morrill Act, 1862. Founded as the Illinois Industrial University, it was renamed UIUC in 1885. Highly reputed for academic and research excellence, the university has produced 24 Nobel laureates and 26 Pulitzer Prize winners over the past 150 years. Currently, UIUC’s 16 colleges offer over 250 study programmes to 33,000 undergraduate and 15,500 postgraduate students mentored by 3,000 highly-qualified faculty. Urbana-Champaign. Located 284 km north of St. Louis and 222 km south of Chicago, Urbana-Champaign are twin cities, ranked #4 in the US for college students by CityLab, for its “big city amenities and small-town affordability, accessibility, safety and friendliness”. Served by an enviable public transport system, students have easy and rapid access to the major metros of Chicago and Indianapolis. But with its 80 public parks and three large forest reserves, the twin cities offer an array of outdoor activity options such as hiking, biking, fishing, swimming, boating, camping and cross-country skiing. It also offers a lively nightlife with a wide variety of restaurants serving a range of cuisines, recreational opportunities, unique museums and great theatre and music festivals. The coldest month is January (0°C) and the hottest, July (24°C). Campus facilities. Set on a sprawling 6,370-acre campus, UIUC offers world-class academic and research facilities, superbly equipped laboratories and classrooms with 24×7 wireless Internet access. It’s also one of the most disabled-friendly campuses worldwide, providing students with disabilities access to all university services and facilities including a wheelchair-accessible bus system. The university’s library system houses 13 million volumes in its 37 unit libraries and is famed for its rare engineering and agriculture manuscripts which attract over a million visitors every week. The university’s Krannert Center for the Performing Arts hosts four theatres with a seating capacity of 4,000. Its two museums — the Krannert Art Museum and Kinkead Pavilion — contain 10,000 works of art and the Spurlock Museum houses 54,000 artefacts. The UIUC campus also contains a research park which hosts innovation centres for…

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Manchester International School, Coimbatore

Within less than a decade since it was established, MIS has earned an excellent reputation in the textiles city and beyond for providing rigorous academics balanced with co-curricular and sports education to its 539 students including 29 from six foreign countries – Hemalatha Raghupathi Spread over a 17-acre green campus featuring expansive avenues, shady nooks and landscaped gardens in Coimbatore’s fast-growing educational hub of Saravanampatti, the Manchester International School (MIS, estb.2009) has earned an excellent reputation in the textile city and beyond for providing rigorous academics balanced with co-curricular and sports education to its 539 students including 272 girl children and 29 students from six foreign countries. In the EducationWorld India School Rankings 2018-19, MIS is ranked Tamil Nadu’s #2 international day-cum-boarding school, and among India’s Top 10 schools (#5) for STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) education excellence in the EW Grand Jury Awards 2018-19. Promoted in 2009 by businessman P.S. Moorthi and wife Priya with the objective of establishing the first IB (International Baccalaureate) school in Coimbatore (pop. 1.6 million), MIS has evolved into a highly-respected K-12 school affiliated with multiple school-leaving exam boards — International Baccalaureate, Geneva; Cambridge Assessment International Education, UK, and the Delhi-based Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). Currently, it offers the IB Primary Years Programme (PYP: classes I-V) to 218 students mentored by 28 teachers; the Cambridge IGCSE, AS and A levels (classes VI-XII) to 171 pupils tutored by 18 teachers and the CBSE curriculum (kindergarten-class VIII) to 150 children mentored by 16 teachers. MIS also hosts a state-of-the-art preschool M-Kids on its main campus and an M-Kids’ franchise in the Ramnagar suburb for children aged 1.5-6 years which provides a blend of Montessori and IB pedagogies. “The prime objective of MIS is to provide children of this fast growing city access to high-quality syllabuses and curriculums of offshore examination boards and prepare them for admission into the world’s best universities. The IB and Cambridge International affiliations empower us to provide students broad and balanced education rooted in contemporary inquiry-based pedagogies so that they evolve into socially conscious, well-adjusted citizens prepared to take on challenges of the new globalised order. Student diversity is also very important for us and currently we host 23 NRI students from Singapore, Malaysia and the Middle East, and six from France, Germany and China,” says P.S. Moorthi, an alumnus of Bharathiar University, managing director of the city-based Aishwariyaa Handlooms Pvt. Ltd and promoter-chairman of MIS. To realise its institutional goal of providing education with an international perspective and reach, the Manchester International School management has integrated special programmes for language development and STEAM excellence into its curriculums. They include robotics engineering, 3D printing, fashion design and photography. Moreover, MIS has signed up with the Singapore Institute of Management and Rotary Youth Exchange for student exchange programmes. The school’s emphasis on nurturing academic excellence through diverse skills development and exchange programmes is paying dividends. In 2018, six of 12 students who wrote Cambridge International’s A level exam received…

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University of Canterbury, New Zealand

Registered as Canterbury College in 1863, University of Canterbury, New Zealand admitted women students in its very first batch and produced the first woman graduate of the British empire. In 1961 University of Canterbury, New Zealand was granted autonomous university status The University of Canterbury (UC, estb.1873), New Zealand’s second-oldest institution of higher education, is consistently ranked among the Top 1 percent of universities worldwide with an excellent reputation for faculty research. Sited on an expansive 170-acre campus in Christchurch, UC is ranked #231 in the latest QS World University Rankings 2019 and awarded 5-Star QS certification for research and teaching excellence. The Times Higher Education WUR (World University Rankings) 2019 ranks UC in the #300-350 band. Currently, University of Canterbury’s five colleges — arts, business, education, law, science and engineering — offer 70 study programmes to 14,000 students from over 100 countries mentored by 715 full-time faculty and visiting faculty from top-ranked universities including Oxford and Cambridge. A research-intensive institution, University of Canterbury, boasts the most extensive network of research field stations in New Zealand (pop. 4.7 million) including a premier astronomical research facility on Mount John, Tekapo and research establishments in Antarctica and Nigeria. Registered as the Canterbury College in 1863 by several Oxford and Cambridge graduates, University of Canterbury, New Zealand admitted women students in its very first batch and produced the first woman honours graduate of the British empire. In 1961, Canterbury College was granted autonomous university status and transformed into the University of Canterbury. Famous University of Canterbury, New Zealand alumni include prominent NZ politician Sir Apirana Ngata; legendary physicist Ernest Rutherford; children’s author Margaret Mahy; Creig Nevill Manning, engineering director of Google, and internationally respected economist David Teece. Christchurch. Christchurch (pop. 350,000) is the second-largest city of this island nation and is currently undergoing a major makeover to transform into the world’s most modern and sustainable city. Hosting the country’s largest ICT industry cluster, this ‘digital city’ is a hub of innovation, research and technology, and boasts the lowest unemployment in Australasia. Major industries include engineering, biotechnology, avionics, electronics, software engineering, agriculture, education, forestry, nutraceuticals, Antarctic research and tourism. This coastal city offers a wide range of recreational options with surfing-friendly beaches 15-minutes drive from the city centre and alpine skifields within two hours drive. Other attractions include the historic French town of Akaroa, thermal hot springs of Hanmer, snowboarding slopes of the Southern Alps and whale watching waters of Kaikoura. Christchurch is also popular among students for its variety of restaurants, cafes, pubs, concerts, sports and cultural events. The city experiences temperate, dry summers with temperatures averaging 22°C in summer. But in winter, temperature often falls to sub-zero. Campus facilities. UC’s 170-acre main campus, overlooking the River Avon, is currently under renovation expected to be completed by year end. Over the past decade, the university management has invested $163 million (Rs.800 crore) in building new state-of-the-art science and engineering labs with over 1.9 million units of research equipment, teaching spaces, 24/7 computer suites,…

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Venkateshwar International School, Delhi

Established 18 years ago in Sector 10, Dwarka to offer high-quality primary-secondary education, Venkateshwar International School, Delhi has experienced steady rise in enrolments year-on-year, from 200 to 2,700 students including 1,079 girl children because of favourable word-of-mouth publicity – Autar Nehru Established in 2001 in the then newly notified suburb of Dwarka, Venkateshwar International School (VIS), Sector 10, has steadily built a reputation in Delhi NCR for providing rigorous, contemporary IT-enabled K-12 education supplemented with a wide array of co-curricular and sports education options. In the EducationWorld India School Rankings 2018-19, VIS is ranked #8 in Delhi and #12 in Delhi NCR in the highly competitive co-ed day schools category. Affiliated with the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), Venkateshwar International School was promoted in the new millennium by Rajpal Solanki, founder and managing director of Sohn Steel Pvt. Ltd and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader, under the aegis of Sri Venkateshwar Education Society, to offer high-quality primary-secondary education to parents flocking to the high-rise housing societies of Dwarka. Since then, student enrolment has risen year-on-year from 200 to 2,700 including 1,079 girls mentored by 150 teachers, mainly because of word-of-mouth publicity. “Venkateshwar International School is positioned as a progressive school offering internationally benchmarked education rooted in Indian values and traditions. Since inception, our objective has been to focus not only on academic excellence but on social, emotional and ethical development of children as well. Since then over the past 18 years, we have maintained our growth momentum and reputation through continuous improvement on all fronts,” says Mrinalini Kaura, director and founder-principal of Venkateshwar International School. An alumna of Kurukshetra and Delhi universities who taught at Modern School, Barakhamba Road and served as vice principal of DPS, Noida and Ghaziabad, Kaura had a fortuitous meeting with Rajpal Solanki, when she was flat-hunting in Dwarka. “It was a meeting which changed my life and gave me an opportunity to apply my knowledge and skills of institution development,” recalls Kaura. True to her word and the driving force of Venkateshwar International School for the past two decades, Kaura has played a major role in developing VIS into a 21st century institution infused with Indian traditions and culture as per the promoter’s brief, while simultaneously introducing international best practices, teacher development programmes and upgrading the school’s infrastructure. “Today we pride ourselves on our contemporary infrastructure, excellent teachers who deliver personalised experiential learning, and our wide range of co-curricular and sports activities. Our alumni are doing well in their chosen professions with many having been admitted into prestigious IITs and top-ranked foreign universities,” says Kaura. Venkateshwar International School‘s child-centred experiential learning pedagogies, designed to develop students’ critical thinking skills, have resulted in consistently good board exam results. In 2018, of the 200 Venkateshwar International School’s students who wrote the class X CBSE exam, 62 scored 90 percent-plus. Similarly, the average score of the class XII school-leaving students was 84.2 percent, with 72 scoring 90 percent-plus. The high-quality, comprehensive academic programme is supported by excellent…

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University of East London

This 27-year-old varsity, University of East London (UEL) is ranked among the world’s Top 200 ‘young universities’ by THE with its school of architecture ranked #2 and civil engineering #3 in London Sited on three campuses across London — a global hub of finance, fashion, culture and education — the University of East London (UEL, estb. 1992) is a highly respected public varsity providing undergrad and postgraduate study programmes to 17,000 students from 135 countries, mentored by 1,300 faculty. This 27-year-old varsity is ranked among the world’s Top 200 ‘young universities’ by Times Higher Education and #701-750 in the latest QS World University Rankings 2019. Moreover, University of East London’s school of architecture is ranked #2 and civil engineering #3 in London by the Guardian University Guide 2018, and the university is ranked #1 for impact of psychology research in the UK by Research Excellence Framework 2014. Currently, University of East London’s seven schools offer over 150 study programmes on its three campuses located in the East London boroughs of Stratford and the Docklands. The history of University of East London can be traced back to 1898 with the establishment of West Ham Technical Institute. In 1988, the West Ham, Walthamstow and Dagenham colleges were merged to create the North East London Polytechnic, renamed the Polytechnic of East London in 1989. Subsequently in 1992, it became one of the numerous polytechnics in the UK conferred university status. Famous UEL alumni include Edison James, former prime minister of the Dominican Republic; British Labour politicians Hilary Armstrong and Rupa Huq; Al Jazeera English news presenter Daljit Dhaliwal; artists Chapman brothers (Jake and Dinos); former CEO of Ford Motor Company Alexander Trotman; Judo Olympian Gemma Gibbons, Ashraf Mohammad, BAFTA winner and Bollywood actress Sonam Kapoor. London. Europe’s most populous (8.7 million) metropolis with a business, cultural and academic heritage spanning centuries, London is an education in itself. A global centre of finance, law, fashion, design, media and communications, it is also one of the world’s most respected cultural capitals. University of East London is sited in east London’s Docklands, north of the river Thames. Once a hub of Britain’s seaborne trade, it lost its glory during the two world wars and after World War II was rebuilt as a residential and commercial suburb. University of East London’s campus is located within sight of Canary Wharf, the 97-acre commercial estate boasting a huge selection of shops, concert venues, bars, cafes and offices. Moreover, shops, clubs, cinemas and the best restaurants and pubs of central London and the West End are all within easy reach by the Docklands Light Railway. Campus facilities. University of East London is spread across three campuses in London — the Docklands, Stratford and University Square. The largest, Docklands, is London’s first new university campus built in 50 years, with striking, futuristic design set in a stunning waterfront location. The campus overlooks Canary Wharf, the Royal Albert Dock international rowing course and City Airport with the Millennium Dome and Thames Barrier…

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The Levelfield School, Suri

Disappointed with the poor quality of K-12 education provided to children in small town India, in 2010 IIT-Kharagpur and IIM-Ahmedabad alum Arghya Banerjee promoted a model greenfield school named The Levelfield School, in the tier-III town of Suri, West Bengal – Baishali Mukherjee Sited in Suri (pop. 67,864), a small tier-III town 200 km from the bustling megapolis of Kolkata, The Levelfield School, Suri (TLS, estb. 2010) is a promising young K-12 co-ed day school affiliated with the UK-based Cambridge Assessment International Education (CAIE) board. Promoted eight years ago by Arghya Banerjee, an IIT-Kharagpur and IIM-Ahmedabad alum, within a short span of time The Levelfield School, Suri has won encomiums for providing internationally benchmarked, child-centric, stress-free education to its 480 students mentored by ten teachers. A role model greenfield K-12 school for small-town India, The Levelfield School, Suri has been conferred the Sankalp Award (2011) of Intellecap — the advisory division of the Aavishkaar-Intellecap Group, which funds social enterprises in Asia and Africa — for being “the most innovative social enterprise” and was ranked among the Top 50 social businesses by Outlook magazine in 2012. A strong believer in the transformative power of high-quality K-12 education, Banerjee forsook a promising career with Irevna Pvt. Ltd — an equity research company promoted by New York-based Standard and Poor’s Financial Services LLC — and sited his model school in Suri because he believes “children in small towns have the same potential and ability to shine, but want for opportunity”. Hence, the name of the school. Moreover, while working as CEO of Irevna, Banerjee was disappointed with the quality of job applicants, forcing the company to invest time in teaching them logical thinking, succinct writing, and effective communication skills — competencies they should have learnt in school. Therefore in 2008, he resigned from his office in Irevna and promoted The Levelfield School, Suri by investing his life savings in the new venture. “As indicated by its name, The Levelfield School is committed to providing a level playing field to children of small towns vis-a-vis their metropolitan counterparts. In Levelfield, we have completely rejected the rote learning examination-oriented system. We are strongly focused on developing love of reading, logical thinking and social awareness of our children. To this end, we harness the power of unconventional learning media: classic literature, insightful non-fiction, great movies, puzzles and board games to help children learn experientially and develop into lifelong learners,” says Banerjee. To implement this alternative pedagogy Banerjee has designed innovative teaching materials. For instance, the school has created its own library of reading material by simplifying classics such as The Prince and the Pauper and Gulliver’s Travels. The school’s curriculum mandates that every child reads 1,500 pages per year from TLS’ 3,000-volume library. Similarly, critical thinking skills are nurtured through Japanese puzzles such as Nonogram and Shikaku, and social awareness through cinema, documentaries and literature. Moreover, the school has digitised its print books to make them accessible through web browsers and Android/iOS apps. Currently, 12 The…

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KC High International, Chennai

In the latest EducationWorld India School Rankings 2018-19, KC High International (estb. 1999) is ranked among the Top 10 international co-ed day schools of India and #1 in Tamil Nadu – Hemalatha Raghupathi Sited within an upscale housing community (Olympia Panache) in Navalur on the bustling Old Mahabalipuram Road (OMR), the K.C. High International School, Chennai (estb.1999) has quickly earned a reputation in the port city for providing well-balanced 21st century education delivered by highly-qualified teachers. In the latest EducationWorld India School Rankings 2018-19, KC High is ranked among the Top 10 international co-ed day schools of India and #1 in the southern seaboard state of Tamil Nadu (pop. 72 million). Initially conceptualised as a modest after-school activity centre promoted by Valli Subbiah, the highly qualified (Tufts and Harvard universities) daughter of industry tycoon M.V. Subbiah, former chairman of the Chennai-based Murugappa Group (annual revenue: Rs.33,000 crore), the centre evolved into the Kids Central Preschool, Kotturpuram, Chennai and progressively expanded into a pre-KG to class X school affiliated with the UK-based Cambridge Assessment International Education (CAIE). In July last year, KC High shifted to an owned 3.6-acre campus in Navalur adjacent to the Olympia Panache residential estate developed by real estate magnate Ajit Kumar Chordia. Currently, the Kids Central Preschool in Kotturpuram has an enrolment of 170 students instructed by 27 teachers and KC High, 285 students mentored by 105 teachers, on its muster rolls. Last year, the co-educational KC High also introduced the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP) for classes XI-XII. “Our prime objective is to provide a safe, joyful and challenging learning environment to enable children to succeed academically and socially. Our teachers are trained to cherish and respect students and encourage them to learn through exploration. Moreover, we use experiential learning pedagogies to develop communication, critical thinking, collaboration and creative intelligences which are of critical relevance in the newly emerging global economy. At the heart of all academic and co-curricular activities at KC High is a determination to develop our students’ sense of responsibility towards the community and environment,” says Michael Purcell, an alumnus of West Virginia Wesleyan University and the University of Texas, Austin who served with the Huston Tillotsan University, Austin; Mahindra United World College, Pune; New International School of Thailand, Bangkok and as school head of Edubridge International School, Mumbai before signing up with KC High as head of school in 2017. The institutional focus on equipping students with future-ready skills through experiential learning pedagogies has prompted the management to introduce several new tech-enabled initiatives during the past two years. They include robotics education; a Makerspace lab for students to design, experiment and innovate products and services; and courses in computer software programming languages. Integrating experiential pedagogies and new technologies into the curriculum has paid rich dividends. All KC High’s first batch of six class X students who wrote the Cambridge International board’s IGCSE examination in March were awarded A or A* grades in at least five subjects. “A major reason behind the excellent…

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St. George’s University Grenada

Over the past 42 years, St. George’s University Grenada has certified over 16,000 graduates who have practiced medicine in every state of America and Canada plus 50 countries around the world Established in 1976 in Grenada (West Indies), St. George’s University (SGU) is a private, internationally reputed institution of medical education offering degree programmes in allopathy and veterinary medicine, public health, health sciences, and nursing. This Caribbean medical school is accredited and approved by the medical education regulatory authorities of several countries, including the Medical Council of India (MCI). SGU’s School of Veterinary Medicine is accredited by the American Veterinary Medical Association’s Council of Education, and Master of Public Health degree programme by the Council of Education for Public Health in the US — one of the few non-US based institutions to receive this coveted accreditation. The university’s clinical training programme is delivered through 70-plus affiliated teaching hospitals and licensees in the US, UK, Canada, and Grenada. Although geographically this medical varsity is set in a remote island nation, over the past 42 years SGU has certified 16,000 graduates who have practiced medicine in every state of America and Canada plus 50 countries around the world. Surprisingly, SGU enjoys the distinction of being the premier offshore supplier of medical practitioners to the US. In the US, SGU graduates are obliged to clear the USMLE (US Medical Licensing Examination) before being alllowed to practice medicine. However, St. George’s University claims 97 percent of its graduates who write USMLE qualify to practise medicine in the US. In India they are required to pass an examination administered by MCI. Initially promoted by “a handful of dreamers” (Charles and Louis Modica, Edward McGowan and Patrick F. Adams), the St. George’s University School of Medicine was chartered by Grenada’s parliament in 1976. In 1991, the university launched a $250-million expansion programme under which it diversified its range of study programmes through the establishment of a school of arts and sciences in 1996 and sciences and public sciences in 1999. Currently, St. George’s University hosts 7,400 students from 140 countries including 100 from India, mentored by 2,300 highly-qualified faculty including distinguished visiting academics from Cambridge, Harvard, Georgetown and Emory universities. Its four academic schools offer 52 undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. “Because of the acute shortage of medical colleges relative to its population, many talented Indian students can’t avail medical education. St. George’s University offers a high-quality affordable alternative. Its rigorous and globally recognised medical degree programmes prepare students for careers in medicine anywhere in the world,” says Salil Gupta, the Delhi-based South Asia recruitment manager of SGU. Grenada. An independent nation within the British Commonwealth, Grenada (pop. 100,000) is a small island of 133 sq. km located in the Carribean Sea. A former constituency of the West Indies, it has rich English and French speaking traditions. St. George, Grenada’s admin capital, is a busy port city with a picturesque horseshoe-shaped harbour and yacht lagoon. While tourism is the major industry, Grenada is also one of the…

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Institution Profile

National University of Ireland, Galway

National University of Ireland, Galway enjoys an excellent national reputation for teaching and research. It was conferred the Sunday Times University of the Year Award for the third time in 2018 Founded in 1845 as one of three queen’s Colleges established in Belfast, Cork and Galway, the National University of Ireland (NUI), Galway, enjoys an excellent national and international reputation for teaching and research. It was conferred University of the Year award of the highly reputed Sunday Times University Guide for the third time in 2018 (previously in 2002 and 2009). In the latest QS World University Rankings 2018, National University of Ireland, Galway is ranked #243 worldwide, and its faculties of nursing, English language and literature, medicine, geography and earth and marine sciences are ranked among the world’s Top 100-200. It’s also ranked Ireland’s top university for graduate employability with 96 percent of students employed or in further studies within six months of graduation. Since it admitted its first batch of 68 students 173 years ago in three faculties — arts, medicine and law — National University of Ireland, Galway has come a long way. Currently, its five colleges offer undergrad and postgraduate programmes in over 60 academic disciplines to 18,000 including 3,000 students from 115 countries mentored by 2,500 faculty. In recent years, the university has developed internationally renowned centres of excellence in several study disciplines including Irish studies, child and family research, film and digital media, human rights, biomedical engineering, semantic web technology, environmental and marine sciences. Among the unique study programmes it offers include a B.Sc in podiatry (study of professional care and treatment of foot disorders) and BE/ME in sports and exercise engineering. Moreover the university has signed foreign collaboration agreements with 120 top-ranked universities worldwide, including IIT-Kanpur, IIT-Delhi and IISc, Bangalore in India. Famous National University of Ireland, Galway alumni include Enda Kenny, former prime minister of Ireland; Emily Anderson, well-known linguist; physicist Alexander Anderson; and Hollywood actor Martin Sheen. Galway. Sited on the west coast of Ireland, Galway is a college town with students comprising 20 percent of the city’s 80,000 population. Acknowledged as the country’s cultural capital, this harbour city hosts several internationally renowned music and cultural festivals including Cork World Book, Kilkenny Arts, Jameson Dublin International Film, Galway International Arts and the Lismore Immrama Festival of Travel Writing. Moreover, Galway is a global hub of the medical technology industry with eight of the world’s Top 10 med-tech companies based here. Galway is two hours by road from Dublin airport. It has a temperate climate with temperatures lowest in January (5°C) and highest in July (15°C). Campus facilities. Sited on the banks of the river Corrib, the university’s 260-acre campus houses over 90 buildings featuring state-of-the-art classrooms, seminar halls, laboratories, residential and sports facilities. The campus landmark is the Quadrangle building, constructed in 1849 with local limestone in the Tudor Gothic architectural style, and modelled on Christ Church College, Oxford. Other historical buildings include the James Mitchell Museum (1952) housing fossils and…

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Institution Profile

Nehru World School, Ghaziabad

Started as a Hindi-medium UP state board-affiliated school in 1978, Nehru World School, Ghaziabad has transformed into a progressive English-medium K-12 institution offering CBSE and Cambridge International (UK) curriculums to its 1,540 students – Autar Nehru Established in 1978 as a neighbourhood school in Shastri Nagar, a suburb of Ghaziabad in Delhi NCR, the low-profile Nehru World School (NWS), Ghaziabad has traversed a long, eventful distance over the past 40 years — from a Hindi-medium Uttar Pradesh state board-affiliated school to a progressive English-medium K-12 institution offering the CBSE (Delhi) and Cambridge International (UK) curriculums to 1,540 students instructed by 98 teachers. In the latest EducationWorld India School Rankings 2018-19, Nehru World School is ranked among the Top 10 co-educational day schools in Ghaziabad and Top 100 in Delhi NCR. Moreover, Nehru World School has earned an excellent reputation for introducing 21st century teaching-learning innovations such as active learning and maths programmes in association with the world-famous online learning pioneer Khan Academy, USA. NWS’ origins are modest. It was promoted by banker-turned-edupreneur N.K. Choudhary and his teacher wife, Arun Choudhary, under the aegis of Nehru Bal Niketan Managing Committee, in a small rented building four decades ago. In the late 1990s, it shifted to its present 1.5-acre campus and in 1996, switched to English medium teaching-learning after receiving CBSE affiliation. In 2016, it was awarded affiliation by Cambridge International (CAIE), UK. Credit for the 360 degree turnaround of Nehru World School, Ghaziabad from a state board-affiliated into an international school is widely given to Arunabh Singh, who took charge of the school’s administration from his parents in 2006. A graduate of Hindu College, Delhi University with a Masters in education management from King’s College London, Singh has successfully transformed the school into a progressive institution and the first Cambridge International-affiliated school in Ghaziabad (pop.2.3 million). It’s also the first K-12 institution in Ghaziabad to receive the British Council’s International School Award (ISA) in 2011 and conferred the status of an ISA ambassador school. “Right from the start, Nehru World School was built on a strong foundation of values which placed children at the centre of all teaching-learning activity. We have grown organically during the past decade from these strong roots to smoothly integrate modern pedagogies and technology innovations into our curriculum. Much of the inspiration to upgrade Nehru World School came from my postgrad study experience in London where I realised that inquiry-based pedagogy is far more effective than our content-centric rote learning system. Consequently when I returned to India and took charge of Nehru World School, Ghaziabad, we introduced several pedagogy innovations for experiential learning through a mix of hands-on activities and new technologies,” says Singh, a master trainer certified by British Council to conduct student leadership programmes. Among the innovations introduced by the Nehru World School management during the past decade are the country’s first 3D Lab, mobile computer/science labs and its Active Learning Alignment programme to train the school’s 98 teachers to actively engage children in the…

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Institution Profile

University of Windsor, Canada

A multi-disciplinary varsity with 15,000 students including 2,550 from 100 countries worldwide, University of Windsor, Canada is ranked among Canada’s Top 25 universities by the London-based QS Sited on a 125-acre campus in the southern tip of Canada, University of Windsor (UoW, estb.1963), Canada is a multi-disciplinary public varsity with an enrolment of 15,000 students, including 2,550 from 100 countries, mentored by 524 faculty. In the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, University of Windsor, Canada is ranked in the 600-800 band worldwide, and #23 in Canada by the QS World University Rankings 2018. A research-focused university with an annual research outlay of $30 million (Rs.168 crore), University of Windsor, Canada is accredited by the Ontario Universities Council on Quality Assurance, the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, and the Graduate Management Admission Council. University of Windsor, Canada traces its lineage to the Assumption College founded in 1857 as a liberal arts institute. More than a century later, in 1963, the Assumption College merged with the Essex, Canterbury, Iona and Holy Redeemer colleges to emerge as the University of Windsor, a non-denominational, autonomous degrees-awarding institution of higher education. Currently, the university’s nine faculties — arts, humanities, and social sciences; law; education; nursing; engineering, human kinetics; social work; science and business — offer 190 undergraduate, 65 graduate and six professional programmes. Moreover, University of Windsor, Canada has a 100,000-strong alumni network which includes former Chrysler CEO Thomas LaSorda, former Canadian ice hockey player Frank Mahovlich and Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne. Windsor. Located minutes from North America’s busiest international border crossing, directly across a river from the US city of Detroit, Windsor (pop. 217,000) is Canada’s southernmost city. Settled by the French in 1749, it has evolved into a multi-cultural metro with 27 percent of its population comprising foreign-born citizens. Windsor is also the automobiles hub of Canada with a rich industrial and manufacturing heritage. It hosts the headquarters of Fiat-Chrysler Canada and a Ford Motor Co manufacturing plant. Surrounded by blue fresh water lakes, the city boasts over 3,000 acres of green spaces, 180 parks and 40 miles of bicycle trails, apart from art galleries, museums, and world class sports venues. It also has a bustling nightlife and offers an array of restaurants, pubs and concert halls. Detroit, Michigan, is a mere ten minutes by road. The city has a semi-continental climate, with warm, humid summers and cold winters. Summer temperature averages 23°C plunging to -3°C in winter. Campus facilities. The university’s 125-acre campus overlooks Windsor’s riverfront and the Detroit skyline. Ranked among the Top 5 greenest universities in Canada by the Princeton Review’s Guide to 353 Green Colleges 2015, it offers state-of-the-art academic, residential and sports facilities. Campus landmarks include the Ed Lumley Centre for Engineering Innovation (estb.2012), a world-class facility with latest in-classroom teaching technology, an Industrial Courtyard for collaborative work with 80 research labs, and the Leddy Library, which hosts over 3 million learning resources including 1 million electronic titles and data sets. Moreover, renovation of the…

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Institution Profile

Tula’s International School, Dehradun

Combining contemporary international pedagogies with India’s ancient gurukul traditions, Tula’s International School, Dehradun has quickly established a good reputation – Autar Nehru Sited on an eco-friendly 30-acre campus in Dhoolkot village, 20 km from the K-12 education hub of Dehradun, the new age co-ed wholly residential Tula’s International School (TIS, estb. 2013), is fast earning a reputation for providing excellent academic, co-curricular and sports education, as also pastoral care to its students. In the recently published EducationWorld India School Rankings 2018-19, the low-profile Tula’s International School, Dehradun is ranked among India’s Top 40 co-ed boarding schools and #8 in Uttarakhand which hosts some of the country’s most respected boarding schools including The Doon School and Welham Boys (Dehradun), and St. George’s College (Mussoorie). Affiliated with the Delhi-based Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), this fully-residential class V-XII school has 200 students mentored by 50 teachers on its muster rolls. Promoted by real estate tycoon Sunil Kumar Jain under the aegis of Rishab Educational Trust which has also established Tula’s Institute of Engineering & Management College (estb. 2006) in Dehradun, TIS’ mission statement is to “offer well-rounded academic excellence through quality education and learning experiences”. “In the early 2000s my father S.K. Jain was associated with the activities of the Lions Club of India and as such was inspired to promote Tula’s Institute of Engineering in 2006. Encouraged by the enthusiastic public response to our engineering college, in 2013 we decided to promote a full-fledged residential school to provide internationally benchmarked education rooted in Indian culture and values,” says Raunak Jain, a business management postgrad of Royal Holloway University, London and director of TIS. The distinguishing feature of the five-year-old TIS is that it combines contemporary international pedagogies with India’s ancient gurukul traditions. “TIS is a modern day gurukul where students and their gurus live and learn together in a stimulating, non-stressful environment. I believe it’s this unique combination of the time-tested gurukul tradition with 21st century academic pedagogies which has quickly won TIS an excellent reputation as one of the best co-ed boarding schools in Uttarakhand,” says Shalini Sharma, an alumnus of Meerut’s Chaudhury Charan Singh and Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna Garhwal (Uttarakhand) universities who was appointed principal of TIS in July 2016. According to Sharma, the gurukul concept has been fully integrated into the school’s teaching-learning process with self-learning students consulting with teachers in specially designed subject classrooms/workstations to resolve specific difficulties. “Tula’s is the only CBSE school in North India which has subject specific classrooms with hi-tech workstations to enable hands-on learning. The workstations are equipped with state-of-the-art projection systems, interactive white boards, high-speed wireless Internet connectivity and learning aids,” she explains. To provide this alternative style of primary-secondary education, the Rishab Educational Trust has invested heavily in state-of-the-art infrastructure. The school’s 30-acre campus located adjacent to Tula’s Engineering Institute, is designed by Delhi-based architect Viresh Goel and provides eight SMART classrooms, well-equipped science labs, a computer lab with 30 PCs and Internet connectivity, a library with 12,000 book…

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Institution Profile

Manipal Institute of Technology

A constituent college of the Manipal Academy of Higher Education (estb. 1957), Manipal Institute of Technology has been consistently ranked among the countrys Top 10 engineering colleges and #1 in Karnataka,in the EW India Higher Education Rankings for the past three years – Odeal DSouza Sited on a 162-acre campus atop a plateau overlooking the azure Arabian Sea to the west and forested Western Ghats to the east within Indias university town of Manipal (pop.50, 000) in Karnataka, the Manipal Institute of Technology (MIT) is a constituent college of the Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE estb. 1956). Awarded deemed (private) university status in 1993, last month (July) MAHE was proclaimed one of the countrys six Institutes of Eminence by the Union HRD ministry. Manipal Institute of Technology (estb.1957) has been consistently ranked among the countrys Top 10 engineering colleges and #1 in Karnataka, in the EducationWorld India Higher Education Rankings for the past three years. Notable Manipal Institute of Technology alumni include Satya Nadella, CEO of IT behemoth Microsoft Corp, USA; Rajeev Suri, president of Nokia Corp, Europe; and M. George Muthoot, chairman of the Kochi (Kerala) based Muthoot Finance Ltd. Founded as the Manipal Engineering College (MEC) by legendary educationist-philanthropist Dr. T.M.A Pai (1898 -1979), MEC admitted its first batch of 120 civil engineering students in 1957. Seventeen years later, Dr. Pai christened MEC as Manipal Institute of Technology after an inspirational visit to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. Formerly affiliated with the Karnatak and Mysore universities, in 1980 MIT was brought under the purview of Mangalore University and finally affiliated with MAHE in 2000. Right from the start, our goal has been to provide high-quality industry-focused technical education combining project work, research and in-company internships. I believe its this combination of hands-on curriculums tailored to meet industry needs that has enabled us to produce industry-ready engineers who are welcomed by higher education institutions and corporates in India and around the world, says Dr. Srikanth Rao, director of Manipal Institute of Technology. An alumnus of Manipal and Mysore universities, Rao began his career in industry as a mechanical engineer with Hindustan Dorr-Oliver Ltd, prior to signing up with his alma mater as a professor of mechanical engineering in 1989. In 2012 he was appointed joint director and promoted to the office of director in January this year. Like the neighbouring Kasturba Medical College (KMC, estb. 1953) — also a constituent unit of MAHE — which has established a global reputation (25 percent of all medical practitioners in Malaysia are KMC graduates), Manipal Institute of Technology too has established an international reputation. Almost 10 percent of enrolled students are from ten foreign countries including Tanzania, Oman, Kenya and Saudi Arabia. Moreover faculty and student exchange programmes have been signed up with top-ranked universities worldwide. Among them: Melbourne and National (Australia), Chemnitz (Germany), EFREI — Engineering School of Information and Digital Technologies (France), Nottingham and Strathclyde, Glasgow (UK), and Cincinnati (USA) universities. Currently Manipal Institute of Technology, which has…

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