Studying abroad was once almost synonymous with studying in the US. For many Indian families, the formula seemed straightforward: get into a prestigious American university, earn a degree, secure a good job and build a successful career overseas. But that formula is changing.
According to Tripti Singh, educational psychologist, counsellor and Head of Postgraduate Admission Services at The Red Pen, families are increasingly questioning what they actually want from an international education. Rising costs, geopolitical uncertainty, changing employment prospects and the growing strength of universities across Asia and Europe are encouraging parents and students to think beyond traditional destinations.
At the same time, Tripti believes some of the biggest changes need to happen much closer to home. From parents worrying about Harvard admissions when their children are still in primary school to students being afraid of failure, she highlights the growing pressure surrounding education and career choices.
In this conversation with DiscoverU, Tripti shares her perspective on study abroad options, university selection, education abroad, university rankings, parenting, career exploration, failure and preparing students for an uncertain future.
“The US myth got busted.”
Q & A with Tripti Singh
How has the study abroad landscape changed in India over the last decade?
A decade in India has passed incredibly quickly when we talk about education and the rise of educational options. At the beginning of this period, families were only starting to understand that a child in high school didn’t have to be limited to commerce, science or arts. New liberal arts universities began appearing and suddenly there were more possibilities. Students could spend three or four years exploring themselves instead of following a one-size-fits-all approach. This was particularly exciting for students from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities because they could move to larger cities, live on campus and experience diverse communities, new infrastructure, athletics and a completely different environment. Their grades mattered, but so did essays, experiences and the way they presented themselves. Then something interesting happened. As students from these cities started aspiring to these new universities, families in Tier 1 cities began asking themselves where their children should go next. Studying abroad became a bigger aspiration, partly because families felt they had to do something even better. Then COVID disrupted that entire trajectory. Families who had spent years telling their children that they would study abroad suddenly had to say, “You can’t go.” Those students entered Indian liberal arts universities instead, creating a much more diverse mix of students. Now, as they graduate, we’re seeing another shift. Some students are frustrated because they feel they don’t know where they belong, while others are much more adaptable. A student who couldn’t afford an immediate master’s abroad may simply say, “I’ll work for a few years and then decide.” That adaptability is becoming incredibly valuable.
Are parents becoming too focused on getting their children into prestigious universities from a very young age?
Absolutely. Parents are coming to us when their children are in nursery or Grade 1 and asking, “What board should my child do so that they get into Harvard?” It’s a great question in the sense that it tells me what the parent is thinking, but I would first want to understand their expectations. What are you expecting from your child? What is the fear you’re living with as a parent? When I hear about CBSE and ICSE results where everyone seems to be getting 98 or 99 percent, I also hear about children spending eight hours in school followed by several more hours in tuition. If your child needs to study 12 to 15 hours a day just to get a 98 percent, what skills are they actually developing beyond rote learning? The IB was built around skills, so if an IB student needs tuition for everything, that itself becomes an oxymoron. We’ve moved from a generation of parents who said, “Let my child be; they’ll figure it out as long as the exam results are good,” to parents who want their child occupied every minute of the day. We’re funding extracurriculars, co-curriculars and tutoring, but we’re not allowing children to be creatively intelligent, we’re not allowing them to be critical thinkers, and most importantly, we’re not allowing them to fail.
“We’re not allowing our children to be creatively intelligent. We’re not allowing them to be critical thinkers. We’re also not allowing them to fail.”
What do you think this pressure is doing to children?
I think the parenting is going wrong, to be honest. We are becoming obsessed with the idea that a child needs to constantly achieve. Everyone is talking about holistic education, but we’re still looking at 95, 97 and 98 percent as the benchmark. At some point, we have to ask ourselves what we’re actually preparing children for. If a child is studying 18 hours a day, what are they going to do at Harvard except study? They haven’t learned how to be anything other than a student. They haven’t had enough time to explore, fail, make mistakes or understand who they are. I worry that we’re setting children up for a great deal of mental pain later because they haven’t developed the emotional resilience to deal with failure. Even the issue of screen time is connected to this. Parents often say, “My child is always on their phone. How do I get them off it?” But sometimes the child is escaping from the reality we’ve created for them. Your child is escaping you, and the harder you are on them, the more they will escape you and their reality. Make their reality fun, exciting and livable. If you have a life you want to live, you will not constantly turn to your device.
“If you have a life you want to live, you will not turn to your device.”
Is studying in the US still the default choice for Indian families looking at education abroad?
I think that is changing significantly. For a long time, “abroad” almost automatically meant the US. There was a perception that the US was the ultimate destination and that getting a degree there would naturally lead to a job. But that assumption has been challenged. The US is expensive, Europe can be considerably cheaper, and countries such as Singapore and Hong Kong are increasingly acceptable choices within Indian society. Parents can now say, “My child is going to Europe because the US is expensive or uncertain,” without feeling that they’re somehow compromising. More importantly, the old promise that studying at a prestigious university automatically leads to employment has been exposed as a myth. Your child could graduate from Columbia and not immediately get a job. They could graduate from London Business School or Oxford and still take time to find the right opportunity. Once that assumption disappears, parents start asking a much more sensible question: “Why am I sending my child abroad in the first place?” And when the answer becomes about the quality of education, the strength of a particular programme or the opportunity to study something that is genuinely a good fit, the entire world opens up.
Why are universities in Asia and Europe becoming stronger options for Indian students?
The biggest shift is that families are now willing to consider universities based on what they actually offer rather than simply where they are located. If my child wants to study psychology, for example, I might look at Melbourne, NUS in Singapore, Amsterdam or Bath because they have strong programmes and faculty in that area. If the child wants to work in manufacturing and aerospace, I might look at France because of Airbus, the US because of Boeing, or China because of companies such as COMAC. I’m not going to say, “You have to go to America because that’s the only way to succeed.” I’m going to ask, “Where can this child get the exposure they actually want?” That’s a much more rational way of making an education decision. We’ve taken away some of the pressure around needing a job abroad after graduation, and once that pressure disappears, parents become much more open to universities across the globe. The decision becomes about the student, the subject, the university and the kind of experience they need—not about proving something to society.
“We’ve taken away that pressure from our children of getting a job abroad.”
Is completing an undergraduate degree in India and then going abroad for a master’s a smart pathway?
There is no universal right or wrong answer. The first question is financial affordability. Parents should not feel pressured to provide their child with an international undergraduate experience if it means taking a mortgage or compromising their own financial security. Kids grow up and they will find their path. But if a family can comfortably afford international education, then I do think there can be tremendous value in allowing a child to step outside a familiar environment. India is incredibly diverse, but it can still be relatively homogeneous compared with studying in another country. A child moving from Chennai to Delhi can experience a cultural shift; imagine what happens when that same child studies in South Korea or another country with a completely different culture and language. The exposure can develop a much greater sense of global-mindedness. At the same time, the university has to teach the subject exceptionally well. If you’re studying marketing, for example, does the institution give you access to industry faculty, real campaigns and meaningful internships? If you’re studying psychology, are you learning from current research? Are there labs? Can you become a research assistant or teaching assistant? Those opportunities can be extremely valuable. But none of this should come at the cost of a family’s financial health or a student’s mental health.
How should parents decide whether their child is emotionally ready to study abroad?
This is incredibly important and often overlooked. Not every child has the emotional bandwidth to thrive outside the home environment. Parents are actually the best people to assess this. As an education counsellor, I can say, “Go to Australia, you’ll be fine,” but I don’t know your child in the same way you do. You know how sensitive they are to being away from home, how they respond to change and whether they have the emotional maturity to manage the first six difficult months. The goal isn’t simply to make sure that your child can survive in another country. The goal is for them to thrive. Sometimes a child genuinely needs the comfort of home for another few years while they develop emotional maturity. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Studying abroad can be an incredible opportunity, but it has to be the right opportunity for the individual child.
“Thriving is important. Live, anybody can. Thriving is important.”
What should students actually do during university if they want to build a successful career?
The first thing is to expose yourself. Explore. Spend time doing things outside the classroom that allow you to engage more deeply with your subject, but also give yourself opportunities to try completely unrelated things. Volunteer. Organise a charity cricket match. Help your mother’s cookie business with Instagram. Attend an inter-college festival. Become a contingent leader. Help put together a performance. The point is not that each activity will become part of your career. The point is that every experience gives you information about yourself. You may graduate with a very strong dataset of 17 things you never want to do in your life—and that is fantastic. For a 21-year-old to know what they don’t want is incredibly valuable. You then have a smaller set of possibilities to explore. You cannot sit around waiting for a eureka moment to tell you what you’re good at. You’ll never know what you’re good at until you’ve actually gone out there, gone through the grind and got your hands dirty with different activities.
How important is failure in preparing students for careers?
It’s absolutely critical. One of the biggest differences I’ve noticed over more than two decades of working with students is that the people who eventually succeed tend to develop a strong comfort level with failure. They have grit. They fail, but then they get up and put themselves out there again, even knowing they might fail again. I worked with a student who was trying to find an internship in investment banking. We made a list of companies within five kilometres of her university. There were only two. So we expanded the radius. Then we looked at neighbouring cities until we had a list of about 45 organisations. She researched each company, found the relevant HR contact, looked at current job openings, compared the requirements with her résumé and customised her applications. She got zero job offers from those 45 companies. But she wasn’t afraid to do it again. Eventually, one of those connections led to an internship opportunity with a company in Malaysia. The important part wasn’t simply getting the internship. It was learning that you have to keep putting yourself out there. The fear of failure has to be driven away. You have to be willing to go back to the drawing board again and again.
“The fear of failure has to be driven away.”
What role do university rankings play when choosing where to study?
Rankings can be useful, but only if you understand what they are actually telling you. Organisations such as QS and US News are private businesses, and they rank universities using different parameters. You can’t simply compare two universities because one is ranked higher than the other without understanding what the ranking measures. If I were a parent looking at universities online, I might use rankings to eliminate institutions that consistently appear at the very bottom, because that could be a signal that I need to investigate the institution more carefully. But I wouldn’t use rankings to build a college list for a specific student. If Harvard is ranked number one for psychology, for example, that may relate to its research strength at the PhD level. It doesn’t automatically mean it is the best undergraduate choice for every psychology student. Rankings can give parents a starting point for due diligence, but they should never replace research, context or professional guidance. Sometimes I think parents look at rankings because of a sense of helplessness. They are saying, “I don’t know better, so I’m going to hold on to something the world gives me that makes me feel more confident.” But that’s not enough to make a good decision.
“For parents to look at ranking, sometimes I feel like it just comes from that helplessness of saying, ‘I don’t know better.’”
So where should parents turn for better education and study abroad guidance?
I would start with your school counsellor. They can often give you a useful reality check on your child’s academic profile and help you understand what is realistic. If you want deeper guidance, then spend time choosing your counsellor before you start making university decisions. There are many educational and international education counsellors doing excellent work, but you need to find someone whose scope of work and approach fit your family. Once you’ve done that research and chosen someone you trust, trust your counsellor. Parents often spend enormous amounts of time researching universities but very little time researching who is advising them. I would reverse that. The quality of the guidance can make a huge difference because university selection isn’t just about rankings or admissions statistics. It’s about understanding the student, the subject, the financial context, the family’s priorities and what kind of environment will help that particular young person thrive.
What excites you most about the future of education?
What really excites me is the pressure that technology is putting on education to reinvent itself. I imagine education as this very old, wise institution that is now going to have to wear younger colours. Education isn’t going away. The brain still needs a safe, structured environment in which to develop. All the talk about whether degrees are important or whether college is becoming irrelevant is interesting, but education itself will remain essential. What will change is how we deliver it, how we experience it and how it stays relevant to younger generations. I’m excited to see what that reinvention looks like. I think education is going to have to become more responsive, more engaging and more connected to the world students are actually entering.
What is your final advice for young people preparing for university and careers?
Read. Pick up anything, on any device, on any platform, and simply read. Your ability to focus is declining. We’re listening to YouTube podcasts at 1.2 or 1.5 times speed and consuming information constantly, but that isn’t necessarily helping us think deeply. I’m seeing the impact in the admissions process and in the quality of writing and thinking coming through from students. If you can’t focus for more than three minutes, that’s okay. Read for three minutes, get up, walk around and come back. Read news articles, autobiographies, cartoons, anime—whatever interests you. Just sit alone with yourself and read. Slowly, opinions begin to develop. Ideas start forming. You start seeking out more information because you want to understand something more deeply. Podcasts and videos are wonderful, but nothing will help your brain grow and nourish it in the same way as sustained reading.
“Nothing will help your brain grow and nourish as much as reading.”
Key Learnings
Study abroad is no longer just the US
Families are increasingly looking at Europe, Asia and other global destinations based on fit, affordability and academic strength.
Choose the university, not the prestige
A strong university decision starts with the subject, opportunities, faculty and environment—not simply a famous name or ranking.
Let children explore before they specialise
University should provide space to experiment, fail, discover interests and understand what kind of work genuinely suits them.
Financial health matters too
An international education should not come at the cost of a family’s financial security or long-term wellbeing.
Emotional readiness is essential
A student needs more than academic ability to thrive abroad; independence, resilience and emotional maturity matter just as much.
Failure builds career resilience
Repeated attempts, rejection and setbacks teach students to keep going—and that grit becomes valuable far beyond university.
Explore outside the classroom
Internships, volunteering, campus activities and real-world experiences help students discover both what they enjoy and what they don’t.
Don’t let rankings make the decision
University rankings can help with initial research, but they cannot replace understanding a student’s individual needs and goals.
Choose your counsellor carefully
Good educational guidance can help families look beyond generic advice and make decisions based on context, fit and long-term goals.
Read to build deeper thinking
Slow, sustained reading develops focus, ideas and independent thinking in ways that constant short-form consumption cannot.
Conclusion
Tripti Singh’s perspective on study abroad and higher education goes well beyond choosing a university or country. At its heart, she believes education should give young people the freedom to explore, make mistakes, build resilience and gradually understand who they are. For parents, that means moving away from the pressure of prestigious names, rankings and predetermined career outcomes and towards decisions based on fit, affordability and wellbeing. Whether a student studies in India, the US, Europe or Asia, the real measure of a successful education may ultimately be whether they leave with the confidence to explore, fail, adapt and keep moving forward.
Tripti Singh is an educational psychologist, counsellor and experienced education professional with over 21 years of experience in career guidance and global education. She serves as Head of Postgraduate Admission Services at The Red Pen, where she works with students navigating university and postgraduate applications across the world. Her work focuses on education counselling, career exploration, university admissions and helping students make informed decisions about their academic and professional futures.
