Education in India

India has tens of well known, reputable universities – Indian Institute of Technology (IITs), Indian Institute of Management (IIMs), and medical colleges including AFMC and AIIMS. Tens of thousands of students from all over Asia, Africa and the Middle East, as well as from within India itself, apply to these institutions every year. The current admissions process is highly competitive and dryly mechanical.

Leading global universities are exploring alternative approaches. For example, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) now allows students to blog without censorship on the university admissions website. Many other top universities like Amherst, Haverford, Vassar, Wellesley, Yale have also chosen to integrate student blogs into their official university websites.

MIT’s admissions office thinks blogging has helped humanize the process of applying to the university. It has helped students select one school over the other based on the community they feel most comfortable with. Prospective students read about shared interests, hobbies, life on campus and summer activities blogged by students already at the university.

Many of India’s universities can easily adopt the same strategy to attract top students that best fit the curricula and environments they have to offer. Integrating student experiences into their websites through student blogs is a great way to build a more healthy student community as well as to bind together the larger alumni community. Blogging can add new energy to an obsolete dog-eat-dog process of college matriculation in India.