More than four crore students apply to Indian colleges every year, with most experiencing the same issues before and during their applications — how to pick the right city, the right college and the right course? Over the past decade, these exact queries have been taken up by CollegeSearch, co-founded by Anirudh Motwani and Parul Bansal, to make the college application process easier, more in-depth, and ultimately, more rewarding.
Based in Gurugram with a team of 75, CollegeSearch was founded in 2010-11. In 2013, it began its evolution from a repository of information about Indian higher education institutions to a platform for felicitating applications and allowing students a deep dive into the colleges of their choice. Currently, CollegeSearch has a community of over five million students, 15,000 colleges and 30,000 plus alumni spread all across India.
CollegeSearch is driven by the vision that the best colleges are not always the right colleges for each and every student. Based on one’s interests, strengths and performances, CollegeSearch believes in curating a list of colleges that can be the “perfect fit” for a student. It does so by inviting colleges to have their own profiles on its website, where students can learn everything from the history of the institution to its courses, from its placement record to its extracurricular exposure. Like with companies on LinkedIn, students can ask colleges questions or get in touch with an extensive alumni network to obtain greater insights before picking a particular college. Since CollegeSearch’s revenue model is built around advertisements, it means that students can do all this and more for free.
‘Choosing a college is a lot more than just its ranking’
Anirudh Motwani, 35, co-founded CollegeSearch after having to deal with the hassles of picking a college for his own engineering degree CollegeSearch
“There are lots of colleges in India that provide a great education but aren’t as popular as the leading institutions. One of our aims is to shine a light on such places that provide good value for money, as we don’t believe in taking the college rankings compiled by media organisations for granted. Choosing a college is a lot more than just its ranking. Factors like the course, the city, the expenses, all come into play,” says Anirudh, who was motivated to set up CollegeSearch after going through the hassle of selecting his own institution for engineering.
“With the help of our search engine, which is optimised with machine learning, students get access to a variety of filters, which helps them narrow down their choices. Once they’ve made a shortlist, they can read reviews, raise queries or reach out to graduates to ensure that they make as informed a choice as possible,” adds Anirudh. While Anirudh agrees that there are other platforms coming up across India that also aggregate facts and figures about colleges for students to explore, he identifies two things that make CollegeSearch different: “First is the engagement we have with the colleges. We have thousands of colleges that log into their profile every month to update their info and answer queries. This means that, of all the places you post your queries, CollegeSearch is the best place to get heard and answered. Second is the degree of accountability CollegeSearch offers. Because we ask colleges to fill out objective criteria in their profile (such as placement statistics instead of a subjective paragraph on placement potential) and have an extensive alumni network that can verify that, it’s much simpler for students to spot a gulf between what a college is communicating and the reality.”
What are the areas where institutions typically exaggerate? “Placements is definitely one. Some colleges tend to include internship offers from companies as part of their full-time recruitment packages. Our team can quickly identify this by double checking with the college’s own mandatory disclosure statements (where it is illegal to lie),” says Anirudh.
Christ University, IIM Ahmedabad and AIIMS Delhi top CollegeSearch’s lists
IIM Ahmedabad tops the list of Indian MBA colleges on CollegeSearch TT Archives
According to data shared with My Kolkata, the top five most applied to colleges in India on CollegeSearch (as per the last week of July 2023) in decreasing order of popularity are — Christ University, Bengaluru; Amity University, Noida; Loyola College, Chennai; College of Engineering (Anna University), Chennai; and SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai. Among the MBA colleges, IIM Ahmedabad takes top spot, followed by IIM Bangalore and IIM Kozhikode. As for engineering colleges, IIT Madras leads the way, with IIT Delhi and IIT Bombay in second and third, respectively. While for medical colleges, AIIMS Delhi is at number one, ahead of PGIMER Chandigarh and Christian Medical College in Vellore.
“There are plenty of strong migration trends with respect to colleges, too. From the Northeast to Bengaluru and Mumbai, from Kolkata to Delhi, from Gujarat and Bihar to Noida, from Andhra Pradesh to Chandigarh and other places in north India. When it comes to MBAs, though, we’re seeing more and more concentration in metro cities. This is because most Post-Graduate Diplomas in Management (PGDM) courses involve heavy industry interaction, which is only feasible in metros,” explains Anirudh.
Besides its vast reams of knowledge about colleges, CollegeSearch also offers a step-by-step guide to all the major competitive exams happening in India, equipping students with preparation material and resources. Gradually, CollegeSearch, which had started a Study Abroad section a few years ago before abandoning it, wants to expand to attracting overseas students to study in India, too.
‘Your right college doesn’t always have to be your dream one’
CollegeSearch’s office in Unitech, Gurugram CollegeSearch
“We stopped our Study Abroad section because we weren’t getting the best institutions outside India to come on board. However, in recent times, we’re noticing how elite institutions in India are trying to appeal to foreigners. Their argument is that an IIT Ahmedabad can be a suitable substitute for Harvard or that an IIT Bombay isn’t necessarily worse than an MIT, because you’re still getting a world-class education but at a fraction of the cost. This is why IITs and IIMs have been organising roadshows in Europe to promote what they can offer to students. Eventually, we want to grow to associate with India’s best colleges to get the best minds from abroad to the country. We want to play our part in making India a destination for education instead of it being an export hub for talent,” describes Anirudh.
The other long-term goal for CollegeSearch is to re-engineer its website so that students can apply to multiple colleges through a single application dashboard. “You can apply for multiple jobs at once on Naukri and book multiple hotels at once on MakeMyTrip. So why shouldn’t you be able to apply to multiple colleges at once?” asks Anirudh. But the challenges to do that are steep, since most institutions are not tech-friendly and insist on application and/or payment manually. However, Anirudh is hopeful that as CollegeSearch’s network of partnerships increases, it can accommodate 10 per cent of all college applications in India on its platform.
“Quality institutions will always be coveted. But with so many places mushrooming with time, students need to know which options are most viable. Not everyone is going to get into their dream college. CollegeSearch is all about proving that your right college doesn’t always have to be your dream one,” concludes Anirudh.
