Kolkata, Jul 30 (PTI) As part of an initiative to boost the presence of foreign students in its campus by offering scholarships, IIT Kharagpur has received close to 220 applications from international students, for various degree programmes this year.

The acceptance rate of the international students in various masters and doctoral degree programmes is about eight per cent, of whom 11 students have already joined the institute for the academic year starting 2019, an IIT KGP statement said.

"Internationalisation is a priority for our institute, especially with the country making it a thrust area in the recently announced budget.

"Each international applicant goes through an extremely rigorous evaluation process and I am very pleased with the increasing number of excellent foreign students coming into IIT Kharagpur in recent years, the statement quoted Baidurya Bhattacharya, Dean, International Relations, as saying.

The institute has scholarship programmes funded by its alumni, in addition to scholarships offered by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations and MHRDs "Study in India".

The institute received applications from SAARC countries including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, two ASEAN countries - Vietnam, Laos, and two from Latin America - Colombia, Venezuela, the statement said.

Applications also came from African countries namely Madagascar, Kenya, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Angola, Sudan, the Central Asian country of Uzbekistan, the Pacific island of Fiji, Middle Eastern nations including Iran, Syria, Palestine and Saudi Arabia, and Russia and South Korea.

"The presence of international students in our institute brings a fresh perspective to our classrooms and labs and enriches our campus life. This global perspective is going to benefit India in long run," Bhattacharya said. In several countries, international students have to pay higher fees for degree programmes. At IIT Kharagpur, however, the international fees for most graduate degree programmes are nominal, he said.

The MTech programmes admitting foreign students this semester include Aerospace Engineering, Biotechnology, Chemical Engineering, Computer Science and Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Mechanical Engineering.

The doctoral programme in the School of Medical Science and Technology and the MBA programme in the Vinod Gupta School of Management, each got one international admission in this semester.

For non-degree programmes in 2019, till this date, the institute has received 50 applications from the USA, Canada, UK, Germany, France, Norway, Spain, Japan, Rwanda and Iran. "Of the 50, 13 students were accepted through various funding programmes," the statement said.

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