To Exchange, or not to Exchange
The answer: definitely more now compared to a couple of years ago. The number of outbound students across the years has shown a generally increasing trend, in large part due to more and more people getting to know about exchange programs and students having more options to choose from, given the increasing number of MoUs being signed. When it comes to universities, Singapore based National University of Singapore (NUS) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) are the most sought after, together accounting for a third of outbound exchanges probably due to the TFlearn funding available for exchange to Singapore.
That was a general overview. Here’s a look at the department-wise and program-wise representation of students.
During 3.1 (the first semester of third year) and 4.1, most BTech students are occupied with career decisions and therefore, the even semesters (3.2 and 4.2) have a large chunk of students going on exchange. On the other hand, Duals tend to highly favour 4.2, followed by 3.1 which is a close second. The more interesting part is that historically, 2nd year is the least preferred, often because students are late to realize that such an opportunity exists.
For those of you who are interested to know more about these programs, there’s ton of resources available online. For starters, here is a compilation put together by the International Relations Cell, IIT Bombay.