 We have someone who has a list of credentials that is probably what you can call picture profit profile in the world of highly successful people. Vibha Kakzi holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a Bachelor of Science from Carnegie Mellon University. She has also pursued courses at the University of California, London School of Economics, Indian School of Business and Xavier's Institute of Communications. She's a certified leadership coach from Coach for Life USA. At Harvard, she has written a case for the Negotiations Department, which has been incorporated in the teaching curriculum at the school. Her professional experience spans finance, fashion, media and public relations. Vibha is a published author of the book Break the MBA Code and has been featured extensively across different forms of media with articles and quotes in leading publications of the country. Vibha's insights on career guidance, study abroad and education have also been aired on popular radio channels. She has created a niche on Quora as well, where she's recognized as an expert in the study abroad space with over 2 million views and yet counting to her answers. Honestly speaking, everybody, it's a very short introduction that I have given for Vibha today because I know she's going to be talking a lot about herself and her experience. So without any further delay, Vibha, I know everybody is waiting to hear from you. So over to you, Vibha, and welcome to Alfa International School. Thank you so much for that very warm introduction. And I'd like to say thank you and welcome to everyone for joining us on a Sunday. Given the plethora of things you could be doing on your Sunday, I'm really happy to see that so many of you are interested and invested in your future and have taken the opportunity so enthusiastically organized by the school. I haven't yet met you, ma'am, but the enthusiasm for you, your school, your students is so palpable. I think these students are really lucky to have you as their cheerleader, as their leader, as someone who's just rooting for them to be successful. So students and parents, I think we should all first start by thanking you, ma'am, for organizing this series for these students, a really good initiative. And I've been speaking to some people in Pune to understand the school and I've got very positive feedback about how you went from a school, CBSE school to now an IB school, and you're really trying to grow the school and sort of change the mission of the school in a very positive way. So with that, I'll just start sharing my screen. And if you can see my screen, let me know. Can you guys see my screen? Yeah, yes. All right. Okay, terrific. And guys, what I will do is I will run through my presentation and maybe under 30 minutes, saving enough time for questions and answers. So if you have a question as we are talking, maybe just type it in the chat box. And at the end of the session, I'll come back to the chat box and run through the questions. So sometimes you have a thought that might come to you. So feel free to just put it in the chat box so that you don't miss your thought. And at the same time, we don't disturb the flow of the presentation if that's OK. All right. So let's jump into this. Of course, ma'am has mentioned that you've done already a series of study abroad seminars. It seems like you're already familiar with what it might take to get into these schools, a little bit of profile building you've heard from some really prominent alumni. And today's talk is going to be focused around financing your education abroad, the mainly the money question. But of course, if there's any questions on profiling and et cetera, I'd be more than happy to address whatever might be on everyone's mind since this is the last session. Feel free to bring it up. Since she's already made my introduction, I'm going to very quickly just skim through this. You already mentioned I've studied at Carnegie Mellon, did my MBA at Harvard, made a few pit stops along the way at Berkeley Indian School of Business, London School of Economics. I still have about three colleges on my to-do list. But as you can see, I'm a campus junkie. I love being on different campuses. I love learning, absorbing, and I'm a knowledge junkie. So, which is why so many stops at these campuses. In addition to academic pursuits, I also learn music. I'm training as a singer. I'm also certified yoga teacher. I don't get the time to teach, but I do get the time to practice a bit. I'm open water diver, travel extensively, been to over 60 countries, and I speak some French as well. So when you talk about all rounded profile, I try to, you know, when I'm telling my students something, I try to practice what I preach and I really try to keep my profile relatively all rounded as well. I've been the past president of the Harvard Club here in Mumbai. I'm on the Carnegie Mellon admissions council, and I am a certified leadership coach. And if you guys are active on Cora or Instagram, please do follow me at the back, ask you on Instagram or Cora also you'll find us. And if you have any questions over the course of the years, please feel free to ask them on Cora. I'm very actively making sure we respond to all our Cora questions and jumping into what are we do right now? Well, I'm the founder and chief education officer at ReachIV.com. I set up the organization almost 11 years ago now and we're a full scale study abroad and career guidance organization helping with everything from undergraduate, master's, MBA, PhD to executive education. For today's talk, I'm going to keep it centered largely around the undergraduate program, since everyone here seems to be obviously in high school. We are a student-centric firm. Me and everyone else on the team are all experts in this domain, in that we have all studied abroad ourselves and now bring learnings, maybe mistakes that we made to our students and try to really give them the best possible advice. Our advice is entirely personalized and we have a stellar track record with over 95 percent students getting into top tier schools. I wanted to set the tone of today's talk with a quote I found in 2018. And interestingly, that quote is still relevant today. It probably will be in a developing market like India, relevant for a fairly long time. But as we know, the rupee is constantly depreciating, right? For parents who are on the score, parents have probably seen this for years, decades now. The rupee depreciating obviously makes the rupee weaker. Increasing the financial burden on people wanting to go study abroad or any sort of outgoing expenditure in a foreign currency. This is something I feel like we won't be able to escape for a long time unless we have some extremely fantastic economic reforms, which while we are trying, we're not really seeing much impact. So given this is the scenario that the students we are talking to right now are probably going to encounter as well, right? They're constantly depreciating currency. What sort of financial aid options, etc. can we think of? So let's first, you know, for the parents and the students also in the room, let's just get an idea of, you know, how much is this even cost, right? We all talk about studying abroad. Let's just put some real facts and figures to today's problem. So what anyone like to shout out, what are the different things you would spend money on? And you can use the slide as a little cheat sheet. You can unmute and just if you're allowed to unmute, I don't know if the Zoom call will allow you to unmute. If it does, then please unmute and just shout out what are the different things that you would be spending your money on when you go abroad? We've not given the permission for unmuting to the participants, but yes, they can put it up on the chat. Ah, OK, fine. No problem. OK, all right, I was just trying to make a little interactive since everyone's watching. I think we can do that if you wanted that way with us. It's fine. I was just trying to get everyone in the conversation. No problem. No, it's fine. OK, so as the screen here, it will indicate to you the airplane that you can see obviously indicates travel expenses. So you need to travel not only to the college, but in and around. You know, you're going to travel by bus around the campus, etc. So there's a travel expense component. Of course, there's food and groceries. You spend money on food and groceries. There's a core tuition expenditure, which is the main app, the main expense that you pay like a school fees or a college fees. You would pay for campus services. The little diagram with the numbers is showing all the different things on campus you might be involved in, which cost money, right? If you want to do any activities on campus, etc. It costs money. The two little doctors we have here are basically your medical expenses. You have to compulsory take health insurance when you study at a top college, so that will get factored in. And then the common application is basically an application fees when you apply to these colleges. Obviously, you have to give an application fee that is very small and almost insignificant compared to the rest of the expenses. But very broadly at the top level, these are the kind of expenses that you will the buckets of expenses you will incur at a very macro level. Now putting some numbers to those illustrations that we just saw. So what I've done and you can feel free to take a screenshot of this students and parents so that you have it with you. No problem at all. We pull these out of websites from these specific universities. So we did the sort of labor of going to many university stages and picking for you if you can see the columns, the first column talks about Columbia, which is in America, Oxford in the UK and US and Singapore, McGill in Canada. And we picked IIT Bombay as a India benchmark just to give you guys a sense of a comparative, right? The different countries and how much they cost. So very quickly tuition in the United States, of course, is very expensive. Relative to all these countries, it is the most expensive, not just tuition, but of course, living board all of it. So America ends up becoming almost $80,000 a year. Give or take like Columbia is a private institute in New York. If you go to public school, the fees might be slightly lower. But generally ballpark, this is how much you would pay for private education in the United States and multiply this by four years, right? Now, you could condense a four year degree into three and a half years by overloading your semesters, that is possible. They'll allow you instead of taking four or five classes to take six classes a semester and sometimes students do that so they can graduate in three and a half years. You can also take courses in the summer and by doing summer courses and a little overload, you might be able to condense this degree into three years. It's possible that generally it's designed as a four year undergraduate curriculum. So you're looking at a tuition expense, you know, overall roughly if you average everything out, you're looking at roughly upwards of two to one and a half crore rupees as an undergraduate degree expense in the United States. England, of course, still very high on tuition. Large differences that the UK degrees are designed as three or degrees predominantly, much like the Indian system. Also, you might have a one year of savings built in. Singapore from all international destinations is actually the most affordable destination of all and McGill in Canada, we pick Canada again, lies somewhere in between Singapore and the UK. Of course, the Indian cost system is very, very low, right? It costs almost nothing relative to these programs to get into an Indian Institute. Obviously, you've got to do a cost benefit analysis, right? So what you put into your education is what you will also benefit. Like what you reap is what you sow is what you reap. So if you go to college in America to study, for example, your starting salary, if you take average starting salary at a college like Columbia, would be in the range of $80,000 to $120,000 a year, which would mean in approximately two to four years you could pay down your entire college debt and thereafter you would be in an income bracket of $200,000 plus for the rest of your life, right? Considering assuming that you would work in a sophisticated organization, etc. That sort of payoff in India, you don't see, as we all know, the salaries are pretty stagnant in India. And if you end up with an Indian education, you will remain within a certain fixed salary bracket, which is just just a situation in the country. So I hope this illustration just gave all the parents just a sense of, you know, how much is this thing even going to cost us? So for parents who are a little bit early on in the planning phase, they can start thinking about this. I'll pause for 10, 15 seconds just so that you can absorb these numbers before I click on the next slide. OK, I will now move on if that's OK with everyone. We don't need to spend too much time on this, but I also compiled some of the master's numbers to show you guys in case you have a sibling, older child or are potentially not thinking undergrad, but are saying, look, we think about the masters for our children. This is a rough tuition for masters. And we put the duration of the programs as well just so that you get an idea of, you know, how long master's programs. As you guys know already, it's typically one year or two years. So I just want to flag, let's say the infant at MIT. It costs about $80,000. It's also just because, you know, the infant will end up yielding programs to you with starting salaries that are very high. So the point I'm trying to make here is don't look at only one side of the equation, look at the input and the output side when making these sort of financial decisions. Immediately, if you look at short term ROI, like the return on your investment from these colleges in the short term, it looks really skewed, right? Because you're like, wow, I'm putting so much money. But you look at a long term ROI of going to one of these colleges and you realize that there's so much more to it. And honestly, for me, it was not just the financial ROI from this education. It's also the overall experience, right? The kind of people you meet, the kind of networks you build, just the way it opens up your mind, just the liberation and the independence that comes with exploring yourself in a foreign country. So there's many aspects to it. Don't think of it as a purely financial equation. And even if for today you're looking at as a math equation, short term ROI will not make sense. The long term ROI over a period of 10, 15, 20 years definitely starts making sense. I put the same numbers for the MBA program as well for you. We can pause for 10 seconds and let you guys absorb this here as well. OK, moving on. So let's talk a little bit about personal funding. And let's see how do people in today's world currently fund their education? Probably wondering, right, with all those numbers, like, where is all this money going to come from? So let's let's take a look at, you know, where do all these other students get this money from? So this is a broad indicator chart. Roughly 40 percent students, which is a pretty high number, right, are relying on their parents to help them with their education. That's where the money comes from. Scholarships and grants are a pretty big chunk. It's about 25 percent money go comes from scholarships and grants. This, you know, we found this data for like a roughly if you had to spend $30,000, where would the proportion of money come from? Student loans, interestingly, is very low at about 10 percent and college savings plans are about 11 percent. So largely you can see that, you know, it's a parent's contribution. Now, embedded within the parent contribution might be a loan that the parents take. But this chart is splitting that up as parent contribution and student loans. A student loan here is a loan that the student directly takes on in a personal capacity, saying that they will pay the loan back. So let's talk a little bit about where can you actually, you know, lower the burden of this financial encumbrance that you're going to deal with, because scholarships and grants, let's we're going to talk about them a little bit today. Student loans, of course, there are a variety of student loans available, but they come at a cost, right? So let's let's talk about these various aspects in a bit more detail. Let's start with scholarships and aid. OK, I'm not sure if you guys are familiar with this, but let me break this down. So we put them into three different columns for you now. Colleges have what they call need, need blind and merit based scholarships. As you start exploring the system more and more, you realize that these terms are very frequently used. So I thought it would be a good idea to just break down the terms for you so you're able to understand what this landscape is about. A need based scholarship is when a college looks at your application and says, hey, we're only going to give the scholarship to you basis your need. So you need to indicate in your application form that, you know, what you're going to need aid. And this college will then ask you to send evidence of this need. Evidence would be in the form of household income, household income tax papers, bank statements for maybe a period of a year, maybe sometimes even three years. So they will really scrutinize your financial need. The household financial need not just you as an independent entity and then determine whether you truly require this aid and basis your need will then grant you this money. Yeah. So that's a need base that you financially really need this money. There are some colleges will say, hey, you know what, we don't really care about whether you need the money or not. You're just such a great student that rich, poor, middle income, whatever you might be, we don't really care. We want you on our campus at any cost. So that's what we call a need a blind scholarship, where they say you don't need to prove to us that you need it. Everything you've done is good enough for us to want you. If we want you, we'll cover you. Yeah. And that's very interesting because this is two completely different ways of looking at a student in a situation. Right. But that's neat. That's neat. Blind. And the third is what we call a merit based scholarship. Now, some certain colleges will say we're we're merit and need blind or we're merit and need. But essentially, all colleges are looking for merit, right, which basically means whether it's you prove your financial situation or the college says, hey, we don't need to know your financial situation. We're need blind regardless of these two situations. You're still going to have to prove merit. So hopefully the sessions you had before that the school organized for you showed you that how you can prove merit, right? Like basis, your skill set, basis, your academic background, basis, the internships, I mean, like, how are you really proving that you're so amazing to the school that they first want you? So first, you got to convince them that you're good enough for the school. Thereafter, they will see whether they need a need or need blind. Yeah. OK, I'm hoping that makes sense. I will get a sense in the Q and A if you were able to understand what I'm trying to explain, but it's it's pretty simple. It's it's a need or need line basis and the merit component means you really just need to have the merit to own a scholarship. OK, give you 10 seconds here to just absorb this. OK, let's move on. All right. So here. We're going to see what percentage of international undergraduates receive aid. OK, now, this slide we specifically put in to, you know, that lots of international parents, a lot of international students feel that aid is always given to citizens of that country and not really reserved for anyone outside. Also, let's clarify the distinction, the definition of the word international. You if you're an international student, you essentially need to not have either US green card or US citizenship. So if you live in, let's say, Pune, but your parents have a citizenship and so do you, then obviously you do not count as an international student. So it doesn't matter where you're domiciled or where you live. It's the citizenship status that will determine whether you're considered international or local. So these numbers are for international students because the bulk of us on this call today are obviously going to be classified international. So as you can see, it's a pretty large number, right? More than half the students from different countries who come to the United States end up getting some form of international aid. And the average aid awarded is, you know, in anywhere in the range of 50,000 to 65,000, sometimes 20,000 dollars. So as you can see, they're pretty generous pools of money put aside for financial aid because these colleges do realize that they're expensive and they need to figure out a way of getting this really talented pool to their doorsteps, which is why they do this. Yeah. So this is the good news that they do have a good amount of money stashed up for this. We, you know, I want to give you a flavor of, you know, what does school say and what is their perspective on it? So as you can read, Chicago said 20 million in need based financial aid. Remember, the need based was the one which you had to prove that you actually needed the money has been afforded to international students over the last four years, 20 million dollars, five million dollars per year. That's a lot of money, right? All of Yale's undergraduate financial aid is what on the basis of financial need. So there we go. Yale is also financial need. There's no merit based or academic scholarships. Yeah, I hope that's also clear. But obviously, do remember where they say there's no merit based scholarships. It also means that you first need to have merit enough to get into Yale and for Yale to want you, but they then say that, OK, this is now we don't need to need to prove your financial requirement. Or in Yale's case, they say we want to check your financial need. Harvard, more affordable than public universities for 90 percent of Americans and international students is the same financially as American citizens. So no discrimination between international and American citizens. And Stanford says zero parent contribution for parents with income below $75,000. This is what I was telling you that they will ask for household income. And if the parents' income is less than $75,000, they will assume that the parents cannot contribute to the students' education, which is when they will jump in and plow some money into bringing the student to their campus. Yeah, if you want to digest this, just digest it for 10 seconds or so. OK, moving on. OK. So what can you do to understand your options better? What can you do to figure out how you can avail of some of this aid? Very important is to make a connect with someone at the university in the financial aid department. Most colleges have a financial aid or fee tuition or some sort of department where they have designated people who are only brought on to talk about money. So you should speak to the right corner of the university. Start that contact early on enough. To establish rapport and establish interest in the university. So one, make that connect to continuously check the university's websites. A lot of times, the university's throw in a new scholarship. You know, an alumnus might suddenly grant you know, 30 million dollars to the school and say, here's 30 million, 50 million, 100 million years of check. And then what does the school do with that money? Right. The school says, oh, great, we have this money. Now we can bring in better students. So they will use that money to bring better students in. So check the university's requirements also for financial aid and keep keep yourself updated with what they have to offer. If you like our pages on Facebook, Instagram, as I said, my personal pages, et cetera, you will stay in the loop because whatever comes out, we put out we publish, you know, data from universities and colleges, most recent updates. So if you don't end up checking the university website, you just follow us, you might end up picking up on a trend. And as I said, indicate interest in the to the university's personnel, as well as of course in the form and make sure you submit the right essays, the right documentation required to make sure you're part of the pool that will be fortunate enough to receive some aid. OK. Now let's talk a little bit about external agencies. So we covered, you know, college scholarships and college financial aid. But there are, of course, some external agencies that also do provide aid. Let's talk a little bit about these things, probably me. Let's cut off. OK. OK, there's external funding options, as I said, some could be, you know, in the United States, at least there is, you know, some high schools that provide some aid. Unfortunately, in India, there's not that many high schools that are actually stepping up and saying, you know, we have this scholarship or we would be happy to give, I don't know, two lakh rupees or five rupees or something to a student going abroad, but that might become over time an option. There's lots of community organizations. I'll bring up some names, government agencies, which is basically government sponsored scholarships, etc. Clubs, organizations, rotary, lion. Sometimes they offer, you know, money for students who want to go abroad. And there's some foundations that also do this. And let's touch upon some of these. OK. So these are just some scholarships and some organizations that offer some of these scholarships. As I mentioned, the road tree offers a global grant thing. The Aga Khan Foundation also keeps some money. Erasmus, just check this Erasmus Monday thing. They also have scholarships. People specifically wanted to go to the United to the European Union countries. I will also refer a longer list of all of these in just about a minute. Foundations, Public Health Foundation, Narutam Saksariya, Mahindra Induction Trust, etc. All these guys offer some form of aid, but please spend some time understanding their requirements, their criteria, how much money, deadlines to apply for their money. Typically, they would ask you to apply. You would then have to interview with someone at the foundation and then they will give out that money. And of course, you guys are probably familiar with the Nheru Fulbright scholarship at the regular Fulbright road scholarships, etc. Where you will see people getting full tuition reimbursement, but typically comes with a caveat in that you have to go spend, I think, anywhere from one year or three years back with the organizations that the scholarship supports or endorses. But to give you a longer list of these, I will refer you and please do check this out on your own. If you go to our website, reachIV.com, and if you click on resources, finance my education, we have put out a list, a huge list of scholarships. If you just check the undergraduate tab, you will see a massive list of undergraduate scholarships that you might be able to avail roadtree, Tata, Oxford, India4U, UBC, and we will keep updating these as we find more data. Yeah, so this is a good starting point as well for some of you. And we are exactly at the 30 minute mark. And I'd like to open up for Q&A. Just confirming where the end of. OK, let me quickly run through these. These are some of the sample questions that you might be asked. If you apply for a scholarship or to one of these foundations, just to give you an indication, let me just read any one of them. Please describe incidents in your personal and professional life where you show leadership. So this is what I mean. They're trying to see from a merit-based basis how compelling are you as an applicant and why do you really deserve this sort of scholarship? Yes, OK. OK, let's talk a little bit about private money lenders and banks. Of course, there's many forms of private lenders. There's public sector banks. There's foreign banks. There's banks that have already partnered up with universities where they get sort of concessional discounted rates for loans if you take for a specific college through that organization. And then there's private lenders like SOFAI and Prodigy, etc., which also offer aid. So for parents who realize that, hey, look, we got maybe a 20 percent scholarship and we still have 80 percent of money to pay. These are some of the private bankers, first of private solutions that you can avail of. Again, I'll give you 10 seconds to just absorb. OK, let's move on. Other things you can do is, of course, work study. Most countries, the UK, Singapore, the US, etc. will all allow some amount of part-time work as a student. It's typically capped off, which means there'll be like X number of hours permitted, let's say 15 hours or 20 hours a week. Those universities also offer options for students to work. So there's a picture of someone working in, let's say, the university cafeteria, you could work in the library. You could work as a researcher. You could work as a what they call teaching assistant, where you're assisting a professor, teach a certain subject if you're really good at it. You could work in a laboratory doing some research for a professor. So there's lots of options where you can do work study and make some basic amount of money to just sustain at least your everyday living expenses. So your primary expenses become only your tuition and maybe your flights or something going back and forth. So there are ways of sort of taking care of off-floating some of that financial burden through taking on a quick job on campus. OK, let's open it up to questions. I also just want to talk about our scholarship. So we at Regi, we do also offer a scholarship where every year for seven years now, we've been offering 10 students free help with either counseling, which means they are in the eighth, ninth, 10th or 11th and applications, which means they're currently in the application year, which means they've started the 12th right now. So if any of you feel you might be deserving of our scholarship, please do go on to the website. The scholarship actually closing in exactly four days. So we are lucky that this talk happened now. And of course, we have lots of events. So please stay tuned for upcoming events. Most of our events are free. Just follow us on Instagram and you have a sense. And of course, we have a bunch of loan partners that we could put parents in touch with if you are interested in figuring out the loan situation. And as requested, I really just try to center my presentation around financial aid and scholarship today. But we can open up for Q&A and I'd be happy to answer questions in whatever sphere you might have. And hope this made sense. Ma'am, would you like me to take questions? From the chat box. Yeah, so requesting everybody to put down the questions on chat. You can market to everyone so that even others know what questions are being asked. Most of the times we get repeated questions. So it just helps people to know that the question has already been asked. I see we have around three to four questions already, Vibha. So do you want to take them up? Yeah, I think. OK, let's start with Ankita Sharma. Is there any particular criteria these schools look at while giving aid? OK, good question, Ankita. So the criteria let me broadly classify for you into four buckets. It's the same criteria, actually, that they would look for when they're considering you as a student at their college. So if you're good enough to be a student at their college, then other than financial need, these are the criteria. Here goes the list. So list item number one is, of course, academic evaluation. SAT scores, ACT, high school performance, Olympias, other ways of demonstrating academic excellence, etc. So academics, number one. Number two is your leadership, extracurricular, a sport achievement. If you're just really compelling leader, been on the sports teams, played national level, something you know, just really all rounded extracurricular, really spectacular, extracurricular, then that's what they would consider as a factor. Third, they would look at your internships and your work experience. You know, have you done any sort of practical experiences, projects, etc. And lastly, they'd also look at your community impact, right? Like, have you been able to help the school, the district, the city, the state, the country, the world in any big manner? Have you had any sort of influence on a larger sphere of people as opposed to just yourself? And if you have, then that's also a factor. So that's broadly how they look at the profile. They broadly look at this and say, OK, here's someone really spectacular. We want this person. Now, depending on whether we are blind or need based, we will make a decision. So, Ankita, I hope that makes sense. I will take the next question from Mayank. Some skepticism here from Mayank. I have heard that most of the times, our foundations do not give aid to normal people as in the reserve for their own people. Has anyone seen the discussions? OK, thanks, Mayank. So good question and fair point. You might think they're biased and I don't want to make the general blanket statement saying they're all not biased or that they're all biased. I am sure like with most organizations, not just here in India, but worldwide, everyone has some bias, right? It's even if I deny that I have a bias, it's somewhere inbuilt into all of us, right? Knowingly or unknowingly, we all have some level of bias, but nothing extreme that I have come across. I've definitely met people who have a way of these scholarships. And if you reach out to some of these organizations, they will even put you in touch with someone who might have got the scholarship. And at least in our case, when we give out a scholarship, we make them public. So if you go to our website, you'll see the winners published and you can find them on LinkedIn and connect with them. But yeah, I wouldn't I wouldn't go in with so much skepticism, right? Like there's definitely room, as I said, focus on marriage and then everything else will fall in place. Ronald, I'm a US citizen, but I've had all my schooling in India. I want to play for FAFSA and other scholarship applications. How do I go about it? Just go about it the way you would with any application. I mean, just you'll have to obviously see the criteria and check what is the difference between US, since obviously you're a US citizen, international student laws do not apply to you. But other than that, you just literally follow the the regular procedure and go for it. Agya, Opaadya, in the branch of scholarships, are there any specific criteria for the process in case of need line and merit universities? The process. OK. Again, I'm assuming you're asking about how do you apply? Like what is the process, right? Each university. So there isn't like need, need based institutions need this and merit ones need this. As I said, the need based ones are going to require a very, very thorough documentation of household income. You know, just accumulating all that documentation and data is a process. The ones that are purely merit based will not require it. The process could be, you know, some of them might ask for an essay. Might ask for three essays, might have a full separate scholarship application itself, but that has nothing to do with need or financial or merit that just on a university's case to case basis, which is why it's suggested a check with check the university, get in touch with them, make a connection with them. But the main distinction would be for need based or scholarships, they are going to require very, very thorough documentation. Veena, if the parents are in the US, then also students can get it. Honestly, it doesn't matter what where the parents are. As I said, where they are domicile doesn't matter. What matters is the individual students citizenship status. So if the student is an international student, then he qualifies. So if he does not, the student does not have green card or citizenship, then he's considered international. It does not matter what the parents, citizens, citizenship or status is. Most colleges have this financial aid calculator on their website, where we can calculate. Absolutely. They have this financial calculator. How accurate is this calculator? I mean, honestly, it's just a basic calculator. But I think it's pretty good. I've played with it a little bit. It at least is able to put down all the buckets of expenses like I had covered in the beginning of my presentation, like what are the different things you'd spend money on? And it throws out a number for you. So I would say it's pretty good. It gives you a pretty good indicator of, you know, how much money you're going to require and how to channelize that. So, yeah, it's a great idea to it's a good starting point, I would say. Shreya, hello, ma'am. Are the scholarships grants given if the academic scores are not very good? But other things that easy are impressive. I have a keen interest in music, music service events like one, but I'm not very good at making. That's a great question, Shreya. And honestly, the same question applies not only to the scholarships, but also to, like, will I get in, right? So, as I said, first, you need to be good enough to get in. And then they will consider you for scholarship. So, Shreya, academics are important. Now, of course, if you're applying to very top tier colleges, like Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Carnegie Mellon, Michigan, et cetera, they are more focused on academics. If you go sort of slightly lower down the rung, then the schools might not be as academically focused. Also, if you're interested in, let's say, music and if you want to do a degree in music and you have a portfolio in music, you've done a bunch of Trinity exams, you play professionally, et cetera, then they don't really care about your academics because they want you for your music. Yeah, sometimes we get a student who's a national level. Let's say we have a horse riding student right now. And if he's ranked seven in India and 14 across the globe. So he's a world ranker for horse riding. His grades are not bad actually, but in case they were not that great. Anyways, the college is going to look and say, hey, we have a national level sports person coming over. Is this someone we would want in our mix of students? Right, because they get enough people who have sort of perfect SAT scores, et cetera. So schools are also looking for a diverse group of students that they can bring in. Which connects directly to this connection of person is good at sports. Yes, exactly what I said. It is possible. In fact, for sports, if you especially if you play a sport that the United States or the British college or the Canadian college you send your child to, also actively if they have a college team for that sport, then even more so. So especially a sport like let's say squash or of course, American football, sometimes tennis. Check if the university or swimming, of course, swimming is really big. If the college has a college team and they're playing really, really well, they would be more than happy to consider you on a scholarship to get into that program, even if you don't have the grades to support it. Aditya, did you receive a scholarship at any of the amazing colleges that you went to? Thanks, Aditya, for that question. So in my case, the answer is no, because at the undergraduate level, I did not require the scholarship based my parents financial situation. So I didn't apply for any financial aid, et cetera. And in the form, I have a choice. You can check off a boxing. I need some financial aid. I want to be considered or you can check off a boxing. I do not consider me. You can give the money to somebody else. So I didn't check off the box because I knew my parents could afford it. And at the postgraduate level, before I went to Harvard for my MBA, I had already worked for five years and I had worked in the financial sector and I had made a substantial amount of money because I had seen a really good time in the stock market. So my personal financial statements proved that I could pay for my education. So I didn't receive any grant, but there was ever people almost, I would say 70% of my classmates at Harvard, if not more had got some form of financial aid. But because I had the money in my bank account, they did not consider me. They did ask me to send my statements and my bank accounts and my tax papers, et cetera. And then obviously they looked at it. I mean, I knew beforehand that there was enough money in the bank account. Of course, it's separate that when I finished Harvard, all that money that I had made over five years was now gone to the school and I had to sort of restart my bank balance literally from zero. But that was now 11 years ago and that's the past. As I said, long-term ROI on these degrees is very high. So in a long-term basis, I've been okay and I've done just fine. But thanks for that. I like that question. Lots of questions here one minute. Okay, Aronak, can I apply for education loans with Indian banks such as SPF, American citizen? I honestly, I don't know the question to this. I can connect you to someone at an Indian bank from the loan section and check. My guess is yes, they should allow you but I think it's a great question and we should check. So if you wanna send me an email on infoINFO at reachIV.com, I'd be happy to take that and connect you to the right person for sure. Didga shit. Do you have any services for medical fields to become a doctor about? Didga is a good question. And actually very interestingly, for medical, I always almost tell students, do your MBBS like your undergraduate medical degree in India itself? Of course, it's super competitive to get into the Indian colleges also. But more importantly, I feel that it might sound a little weird but it's just the exposure to the amount of diseases we have in India. You won't get that level of exposure you would get in the West. And of course, and I also feel like a lot of my friends did medical here in India and then they went abroad for their specializations or their masters or whatever. And I feel like the base that they went in with was so strong that they really did succeed well in the US or in the UK or whichever system that you prefer. So yeah, if you were honored to consider it, of course you can apply abroad and get a degree in medical and we would support with the entire process, et cetera. But just give the India option a thought as well for medical. Anagabur, how do we apply for the aid? What are the processes we fulfill? I brought that up in my presentation, right? Like as I said, it's each college has their own process. So check on the college's website and see what, you know, they will have a financial aid section and they will give you very specific steps. Unfortunately, they haven't standardized it. So you have to check what each college requires. Are they there? Do we receive scholarship in the panel? And I feel that we can afford that. That's the thing. That's the whole point I was talking about, right? That's need versus need blind. If it's a need blind college, then they will just give you the money. If they're need based, then they would of course check. That was the point of the conversation, are they there? That's what I spoke about. Those three columns, need, need blind, et cetera. That was it. No problem. Admin. Hello, ma'am. Is your undergrad in the US cost here? Then MS in the US. Undergrad in the US, I put down the numbers, right? So as I said, undergrad is a four year degree. So individually, every year tuition and undergrad is roughly $50,000. The master's tuition could be as high as $75,000, $80,000 a year. But the master's is two years and the MBA is four years. So ballpark honesty, it ends up being pretty similar, not that much difference. So Jata. We did a run back from the US last year. My daughter is extant. USA, that's a player income tax. Is there any benefit we get to pay income tax there? We want to complete 12th grade in India in a previous study where help us while applying for graduation. So previous studies will of course apply during four years in the US. Sure, it can help and cannot help, right? There's nothing to say that because you studied in the US, you have an advantage over someone who studied in India. It would depend on her academic performance, the school she went to, her extracurriculars, all those things I spoke about. So there's no real major advantage. I'm not sure what her citizenship is if she just did her six to 10. I'm presuming she's still Indian citizen. You don't get any benefit out of paying taxes there. The only benefit of her profile might be that she can talk about how she's studied in America, went through that culture and then she's studying in India and sort of having a different cultural experience. And that's what makes her sort of richer in terms of what she's gonna be able to bring like a diversity in perspective to a college classroom. But otherwise, that I don't see any very specific. Okay, I have another question. I'm in class nine. What do you think I should focus? I had me build my profile. I spoke about the profile already. I broke it down for someone with four different sections. I'll repeat it one last time. Academic, extracurricular, leadership, sport, community involvement and work experiences. If you go to our website once again, we have a free profile audit tool. So click on resources, free tools and go to profile auditors. And we have an undergraduate profile auditor. It's a free audit. You can go through the audit for yourself and see where your profile stacks up. So please do check that out. Who else? Rona, can you repeat your email ID? Sure, if my colleague, Krizan, might be here and she can repeat it or I'll just try to send it to everyone. Send chat to everyone. Okay, my email ID is info at reachiv.com and Instagram is just Vibhakaagzi and reach underscore IV. For Instagram. Okay, thank you. Okay, most welcome, Vishaka. Ma'am, I want to do long. On scholarship, if I do the course in India and I want to practice in the US, can I do this? Okay, very good question. So very interesting because India comes under the Commonwealth countries, basically a legacy of the British system, right? So Australia, England and of course India, we all practice similar law. So if you do an undergraduate degree in law over here, you can most easily practice there. If you do the course in India and you want to practice in the US, it's absolutely possible, two things. One, I would suggest then getting a master's in law like an LLM degree in the USA and then additionally topping that up with you. To practice law in a certain jurisdiction in America, you've got to take what they call the bar exam. So you would finish undergrad here in India, do the LLM, it's the master's program and then do the bar, what they call it like taking the bar. You take the bar and then you're eligible to practice law in a certain state. It's a standard exam. Of course it needs some time, but there's not many people do this. And that way you can segue from India to the US and take your degree and practice there successfully. Okay, last couple of questions, guys, I have to close this out. Last question here from Dirga. In this COVID pandemic as a 10th grader, what extracurricular can I do? Dirga, there's plenty of extracurricular that you can do. If we do a session with you one-on-one, I'd be able to understand your background, your experiences, your intended degree, what you like doing, and then suggest a very specific list of things. For now, you can go through the free tool on our website to just get a sense of where profile lies. But trust me, there's a bunch of things you can do. But I'd be happy to ideate on a one-on-one session as opposed to on a group platform. All right, I see Yuvraj has sneaked in. One more question, I will answer this. Yuvraj, can two scholarships be availed at the same time? Yes, absolutely. Yuvraj, those colleges have a variety of scholarships. They even have scholarships specifically for different ethnicities. So they might have one for native Indians. They might have one for Hispanics, one for Chinese, one for people of Indian origin, et cetera. They might have one only for women. They might have one for only women in engineering. So I might win women in engineering fellowship as well as just a general scholarship as well. So absolutely, you can win more than one. Look on the college website and see what that specific college has to offer. All right, with that, I am going to request ma'am to close the session.