Career counselling for studying abroad is essential as it helps students make informed decisions about their academic and professional paths. It provides personalised guidance on selecting the right courses, universities, and countries, ensuring alignment with their goals. Counsellors assist with navigating admission requirements, financial planning, and scholarship opportunities, making the process smoother. They also offer insights into cultural adaptation and long-term career prospects, helping students plan for the future.

Overall, counselling increases the likelihood of academic success and better job placements, ensuring students maximise their potential while studying abroad. India today spoke to eduVelocity and gathered some important inputs for students who want to study abroad.

How do you personalise the guidance for each student from 9th to 12th grade?

• Utilise standardised in-house psychometric assessments in grades 8 through 11 to guide students in choosing their academic streams and courses.
• Focus on the holistic growth of each student by incorporating life skills and various profile-building activities, helping them to maximise their potential.
• Conduct a program review session to identify the program of interest.
• Assist in selecting universities that align with each student’s unique needs, ensuring the best fit and maximum return on investment, considering location, compatibility, and program rankings.
• Support the admissions process to secure maximum scholarships for each student.

What key factors do you consider when determining a student’s best-fit university?

• Factors such as the best value, choice of program, program ranking, available scholarships, quality of education, post-graduation outcomes, and overall educational experience.
• The student’s goals should align with the university’s objectives. The university should provide a strong return on investment, taking into account its location and the student’s future goals.
• What strategies do you employ to help PG aspirants build a strong profile for top universities abroad?
• Evaluate academic records, work experience, internships and research projects, then identify strengths and areas that need enhancement.
• Guide students for relevant skills and certifications, research and projects and internships, suggest extracurricular involvement and work on personal branding by aligning their background with the program.
• Profile building strategy is different and personalised for each PG student depending on the program choice
• Can you discuss the importance of extracurricular activities in the profile-building process?
• Engaging in diverse activities not only enhances personal development but also strengthens your profile for applications to top-ranked universities.
• At EduVelocity, our counsellors focus on creating strong, personalized profiles that ensure competitive applications to the best-fit programs and universities for each student and preparing them for college.
• Participating in activities such as passion projects, community service, Model United Nations (MUNs), internships, quizzes, and research work helps build confidence and gain valuable hands-on experience.

How do your 50+ years of collective experience across various countries and universities benefit students?

• Mr Vinu Warrier, Managing Partner & Founder of eduVelocity, and his team of qualified counsellors keep innovating to find new ways to add valuable academic and co-curricular achievements to the resume of their students to ensure that they become competitive applicants for both admissions and scholarship offers from their best-ranked programs in their fields of choice at the world’s best universities.
• eduVelocity not only focusses on helping students gain into their best-fit universities but also emphasises long-term engagement with highly trained and educated psychologists and counsellors to work on life skills development and profile building. The experienced educators at eduVelocity with graduate degrees in psychology have expertise in areas such as psychometric testing, career development, time management skills, life skills development, and interview preparation.
• With over 50 years of collective experience working with hundreds of universities across 17 countries, including the U.S., Canada, U.K., EU, Australia, Singapore, and beyond, ranging from the Ivys to the ‘Public Ivys,’ to small and large, public and private, engineering, medical, business, and liberal arts institutions, EV works exclusively with individual students and their families, and are not agents paid by universities, or higher education fair company, or an immigration agency, or a coaching centre for such competitive tests as SAT, ACT, GRE, GMAT, IELTS, or TOEFL.

What are the unique challenges students face when applying to universities in different countries, and how do you help them overcome these challenges?

• Students often struggle due to a lack of accurate information and misguided advice.
• Identifying the right program that matches the student’s eligibility and subject prerequisites, as not all students are aware that Mathematics is a mandatory requirement throughout 4 years of high school for most of the programs.
• Challenges in preparing for interviews and presenting themselves well in applications.
• Difficulty in effectively presenting themselves in essays.
• A rigorous school curriculum leaves little time for essential profile-building activities.
• Struggles with managing time effectively.

What metrics or indicators do you use to measure the success of your guidance programs?

• We have been able to find the best fit for students in terms of 5 variables i.e., program-specific ranking, funding and scholarship, quality of university, community, size etc., location, and based on the academic and co-curricular profile of the child.
• For life skills development, we use a progress report that we have created ourselves and has been validated by parents and students.
• Gathering feedback from parents and students on the child’s holistic development, and helping to identify the right program pathways. This includes finding careers that not only interest the child but also align with their strengths, as determined by psychometric testing and other available information through their personalised journey.