Students prefer taking up Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) instead of depending on national entrance tests, like the Joint Entrace Exam (JEE) for which competition is higher.
"Around 14 lakh students vie for 30,000 seats in the IITs and NITs which provide good engineering education in India. The success rate is too low even for the best minds here, whereas gaining admission to a top US university is not as difficult. Aspiring students and parents who can afford it have noted this," said Ankur Kumar Jain, Tamil Nadu head of coaching centre FIITJEE.
"More Indian students than ever are taking the test," said Lisa Jain Backliwal, India representative of College Board, which conducts SAT. In 2012, more than 13,000 students took SAT in India, and the number of students in India taking AP (Advanced Placement) Exams, considered to be on a par with JEE in difficulty levels, has increased by almost 30% from 2011 to 2012. "The number of AP Exams taken in 2013 through test centres across eight Indian cities has increased three-fold since 2012," Backliwal said.
Aakash Chaudhary, director of coaching institute Aakash Educational Services, which trains students to crack JEE and other competitive tests, said, "We do a fair amount of consulting for SAT and TOEFL (Test Of English as a Foreign Language). We've seen an increasing interest in SAT in the last four or five years." There is a reasonable level of awareness about the test in most parts of the country and how it will impact careers, he added.
Online, there is a lot of buzz around how SAT is easier to crack than JEE, and more than a few students can be found asking for help on deciding whether they should prepare for SAT or JEE. Many can be found giving the assurance that SAT is a better option, citing competition and the exposure that a student gets at the end of the day. Many are training to get good scores on both, to play it safe. Preparations for both start around the same time, from Class 9.
In India, the hesitation to go overseas for an undergraduate education is because an engineering degree in a good institution in the US is at least 10 times as expensive as getting a BTech from the IITs, the fee of which has been highly subsidized by the government. But many like Varsha Karthik, a Class 10 student in a city school preparing to take SAT and AP, are hopeful that they will get a fee waiver or scholarship after the first semester or at the end of the first year. "I've seen many who train at my coaching centre pay capitation fee and get a seat in a course of their choice at the end of four years of JEE preparation.
The odds of getting that rare scholarship seem better abroad," Varsha added. She said that considering that technology in US universities is far superior than in colleges here, the exposure one gains from studying overseas, and the mindset of universities to encourage you to pursue what you're interested tilt the balance in favour of universities abroad, particularly in the US.