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When deciding on a career in medicine, the greatest university to pursue studies at needs to be thoroughly thought about because it can potentially make or destroy the future of the student. Harvard University and Stanford University are the two universities that always top the list. Each of these institutions has great medical programs to provide, and therefore the potential students have to review their programs for comparison, specifically overall ranking, main subject areas, courses, fees, and scholarships.

Overall Ranking Comparison

The latest QS World University Rankings ranks Harvard University as the top medicine school in the globe with a great overall ranking of 99.1. The university's employability rankings are high and backed up by its 100 in employer reputation, the high esteem in which employers hold a Harvard degree. In relative terms, the third-placed Stanford University - ranked 93 - comes below Harvard but is very close. Stanford maintains an equally high employer reputation score of 94.2, which indicates how good it is at educating medicine.

Key Subject Areas within Medicine

Both the colleges offer extensive studies with core areas of concentration being medicine. The students at Harvard are taught various subjects such as Clinical Medicine, Public Health, and Biomedical Sciences. Stanford offers extensive studies in Clinical Medicine, Health Services Research, and Health Policy. All the courses are to equip the student with all the qualifications required to succeed in various medical professions.

Courses and Eligibility

Harvard School of Medicine provides a Doctor of Medicine (MD) program to students holding a bachelor's degree. The candidate must have a good academic background, preferably science, and good scores in MCAT. Stanford School of Medicine provides an MD program and accepts students with undergraduate courses, giving importance to the science courses and high scores on the MCAT.

Tuition Fees

Studying in these elite colleges costs a lot. The four-year cost of Harvard University's MD course is around $1,08,138 per year, and thus its four years' cost is around $6,10,320. The four-year cost of Stanford's MD course is around $1,44,216 per year, and thus its four years' cost is around $6,56,000. It must be remembered here that students must include other costs like boarding, books, and living expenses as well, which can be equally vast amounts.

Scholarships and Financial Aid

Fortunately enough, both Harvard and Stanford provide students with numerous scholarships to assist them. In Harvard, Harvard Medical School Financial Aid Office provides many need-based scholarships. HMS Financial Aid Application is used through which the students can apply. The students have to prove financial need, and documents of support are provided while applying.

Stanford also offers many options for financial aid, such as the Stanford Medicine Scholarship, given on merit and need. Interested students must apply for the Stanford Graduate Financial Aid Application to be eligible. These scholarships help native students alleviate their burden as they pursue their MDs.

Opportunities Await

In summary, both Harvard and Stanford universities provide unequalled opportunity to health practitioners. By their respected ranks, wide-ranging curricula, and generous provisions for financial aid, students are afforded the opportunity of obtaining a fit that is appropriate for their career goals. Indeed, deciding between the two highly rated schools might all be a difference of interests towards specialisations, campus life, and funds.

A teenager with severe learning disabilities has been asked to travel more than 20 miles for a school place, his mother claims.

Leanne McCrotter claims she has been struggling to get Brody a full-time place after relations between him and his former school broke down.

The 14-year-old, who has autism and also has other complex needs, was attending Lisburn's Parkview Special School, but his attendance hours were reduced to part-time in February.

The Education Authority (EA) said in a statement that they have had "extensive contact" with Brody's family and have made alternative school provision.

Leanne told BBC Radio Ulster's Nolan Show that the school is situated in Downpatrick, more than 20 miles from where they reside in west Belfast.

"The EA said that the principal said that there may be a place and the EA are going to send a full-time teacher and classroom assistant to Brody," she told them.

"I'm going to the school. I've never even heard of the school and it's a distance from my home."

Secondary Heads Association boss Mr Pengelly wrote to principals, said the BBC, putting the number of children with no September school place at 164.

The EA said that approximately 50 children remained affected.

Leanne explained that Brody had been diagnosed with autism and severe learning disabilities at the age of three.

She told how his illness meant that he was sent "socially excluded from everything" and school was the only thing he had.

He attended Parkview Special school for 12 years. Things went wrong, though, after his mum informed him that he had been given half days the previous year.

"Brody swore at staff in September. I'm not apologising for what was done. It's an immensely difficult job and a vocation but other children in the class have all done the same," said Leanne.

She went on: "He was on two days a week one week and a three day week the next."

Leanne describes how when Brody's pattern of attendance was altered, Brody's behaviour completely altered.

"He hurt himself so badly we had to call the paramedics.

"Me and my other son had to lock ourselves in a room because he was attacking us. He doesn't mean it. He's the most loveable child."

She said: "His wee mind is troubled. I need to guard Brody."

In a statement, Parkview Special School described Brody as "much-loved member of our school community for over 12 years".

It continued: "We have collaborated with his family, EA, Health and Social Care Trust's Intensive Support Service, Educational Psychology and social services during this time to continue to search for the most appropriate solutions to address Brody's needs, maintaining pupil and staff safety.".

"All available provisions have been utilized in an attempt to effectively address Brody's needs, for example, involving outside agencies to complete positive behaviour plans, sensory diets and curriculum and provision of therapeutic support on a weekly basis EA-funded.

"The wellbeing and safety of our staff and our children is always paramount and that has been at the forefront of all decisions during this process."

Leanne described a further specialist school, Camphill School, Glencraig, which was deemed potentially suitable for Brody but had been refused a place.

"I went down and it was absolutely lovely," she described.

"I have given first preference. There were two other lads in for it and he was refused a place."

"He is still adamant he is going to Glencraig. I don't know how to inform him because of the aggression."

Leanne agreed she worried Brody's conduct would deteriorate and requested the Education Authority to provide additional assurances concerning the Downpatrick school placement.

An EA spokesman stated: "Specialist placements are intended to be specific to address the individual needs of each child. We are aware a child's needs can emerge and evolve, which in some instances can see a placement no longer suitable and sustainable.".

"We are aware that this will be a worrying time for parents and are presently working with parents, schools and our partner agencies to attempt to find an alternative, appropriate provision which will be in the best interest of the child.".

Harvard University has issued a travel warning to international students, advising them to avoid entering the U.S. through the country's fifth-busiest airport, Boston's Logan International Airport, under heightened surveillance. The university would rather they enter the country through other entry points such as New York's JFK, Chicago O'Hare, or Los Angeles International Airport.

The instruction was said to be communicated on a special call organized by Harvard's international office and the Harvard Law School Immigration and Refugee Clinic, according to a Bloomberg report. The meeting was intended to walk students through any visa and immigration issues, particularly with increasing tensions between the Trump administration and Harvard.

During the call, Harvard staff advised that US State Department officials may review social media accounts in the visa application process. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers also have authority to search electronic devices such as telephones and laptops and deny entry for contents found. Posts that appear "pro-Palestinian," antisemitic, or anti-American can be suspicious. Staff warned that erasing information from devices before traveling can be an indicator of trouble as well.

Students from countries like China and Iran received additional guidance. Jason Corral, a staff attorney at Harvard Law School, cautioned Iranian students in particular to avoid Logan Airport, where they were allegedly more thoroughly screened. Students going abroad for research in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) or artificial intelligence were cautioned to exercise added discretion.

The suggestion follows in the wake of Harvard's latest court win—a temporary restraining order that kept the Trump administration from denying the university admission to international students. The university remains under heightened political scrutiny, with the administration having canceled over $2.6 billion in grant funding for research and challenging its tax-exempt status while condemning its diversity and academic policies.

Indian school exchange programs have gained fresh vigour in recent years. What was previously a novelty or an additional facility for the privileged few is now being sold as a required step in readying the child for overseas education.

As Indian students turn in greater and greater numbers to foreign universities, schools are being expected to do more than simply assist in building applications, but think-building. But whereas as much international travel and cultural exchange as one could perhaps desire may sound good on paper in theory, the question is: how well are schools getting students into the international education experience ahead with their exchange programs?

An emerging pattern, but of uneven depth

Today, there are greater international exchanges from Indian schools than ever before. There are some that have short cultural programmes for a few days to two weeks. Others have had structured academic relationships with partner schools, where the students stay with the host families and attend regular classes. Even during post-pandemic periods, virtual exchanges have seen an increase, connecting Indian classrooms with their European, North American, and Southeast Asian counterparts.

This is to be cultivated. These courses expand minds, habituate students to learning in novel ways, and offer a high-quality relief from the memorization pedagogy many are used to from an early age. 

But underlying the sparkle of images and rave reports, there is a basic question: are these courses deep enough to prepare students for the long-term prospect of studying and living abroad? For some, the answer is positive.

Exposure vs. preparation

Ten days abroad does not measure up to a full degree done in one. Student exchange programs are mostly shallow, providing a taste of culture rather than extended, self-reflective education. Students tour landmarks, take superficial classes, and return home with tales—but maybe not the kind of inner development that leads them to the real issues of solo living in a foreign culture.

Study abroad does more. It requires a living situation with less comfortable support systems, flexibility in accommodating individualized academic needs, and contact with students from around the world. It requires emotional tolerance, cultural flexibility, and academic confidence.

A brief school field trip cannot foster all these. But these are exactly the things students need to learn to excel—not just survive—within a foreign university.

What exchange programs can do right

If carefully thought through, exchange programs can be a fine stimulus to international education. They can give students a first taste of strangeness, the key to forming perceptions and humility about cultures. They can create new patterns of thought, break stereotyping, and extend intellectual curiosity.

They also build independence in small steps—learn to get by behind a language barrier, adapt to a different learning environment, or even navigate public transport in a host city.

Implemented effectively, they make students think not only about the host culture, but their own. They begin to pose deeper questions: Where am I from? How can I belong and still not be lost? What does it mean to be part of more than one place?

They are questions dear to anyone in pursuit of education abroad.

The access and affordability gap

While promising, most exchange programs are reserved for foreign and private schools in urban India. The cost of travel, insurance, visa, and program fees disqualifies most families from taking part. Even the cost of a journey abroad alone may be between ₹1.5 lakh and ₹4 lakh or more.

Virtual exchange programs have bridged some of the gaps, but the availability is still a question of infrastructure, technical competence, and institutional connection—not ubiquitous in small towns or government schools.

The result is a growing gap: while one set of students graduates from school with international exposure, the rest may graduate with good academic performance but intercultural exposure missing. This gap can affect access to international universities as well as performance there.

The weight of NEP 2020

India's National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 also addresses this issue on paper. It has a strong emphasis on internationalisation at the school level and also at the university level. It prefers the development of global partnerships by institutions, mobility of students, and integration of global matters in the curriculum.

More importantly, NEP 2020 focuses attention on the necessity that education needs to be holistic—that is, educational outcomes go beyond marks in class to include moral reasoning, cultural sensitivity, and social sensitivity. It is here that strong exchange programs have the potential to make an impact, if schools only look beyond the transactional culture.

But most of policy delivery remains focused on tertiary education. School-level international readiness roll-out is patchy and an institution-by-institution affair.

What needs to change

Exchange programs will never succeed in preparing students for international education if they are more than superficial visits. Schools need to plan such programs consciously, methodically, and follow through.

This is pre-departure training with cultural education, academic comparisons, and affective preparation. It is official reflection after the program in writing, group discussion, or portfolio submission. And it is using global perspectives to make a difference over the course of an entire school year, not just within a time-limited exchange window.

Of equal concern, they must be universalized and expanded. Scholarships, subsidized schemes, and models of the internet can go to students of all socio-economic groups. Student exchange schemes must be framed not as elitist privileges, but as part of a student's preliminary training for the globalized world.

The United States has attracted the world's top brains for three decades not only because of its top universities, but also because of a comparatively stable visa regime that permitted foreign students to remain behind on campus for the length of their course. A new rule proposed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) now hangs in the balance to upset that guarantee, swapping scholarly uniformity for bureaucratic timers, and along the way risking the future prospects of more than 4.2 lakh Indian students.

The DHS proposal, now pending before the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), would impose fixed stays on F, J, and I visa holders, categories that include students, exchange visitors, and foreign media. The shift, if enacted, would be from centuries of policy of granting stay by academic activity, or "duration of status."

Fixed dates, fluid anxiety

The actual issue isn't administrative; it's existential. Under the current rules, students can stay in the US as long as they're enrolled full-time academically. The new regime would substitute that flexibility for a hard cut-off time limit on their visa and force students to seek renewals, whether their studies are finished or unfinished.

Immigration.com managing attorney Rajiv S. Khanna told the TNN, "Now, international students can stay in the US provided they continue to maintain full-time student status in authorized programs. This is known as 'duration of status'. The Trump administration is eager to do this to a specific duration of stay. With their visa having an expiry date, international students would have to file for extensions periodically.". This will result in further unnecessary delays, cost, and uncertainty for the students. Considering that the processing of a typical status extension application may take months, such restrictive legislation will add to the uncertainty the international students would experience.

For Indian students, the biggest group of foreign students in the US, the stakes are even greater. An ICE report calculates 4.2 lakh Indians who enrolled at American institutions in 2024 alone. The disruption could affect not just their academic calendars but that of the broader Indo-US education corridor too.

A rule revived from the good old days

While new to the regulatory docket, this regulation is not a first try. The same initiative was initiated in 2020 under the previous administration but was unable to progress past the later stages. Its reappearance now has ignited concerns of reinstated tough visa channels under procedural cover.

Compounding the stress is the potential for the DHS to ram the rule through as an interim final rule, essentially bypassing the customary public comment period and putting it into effect on the fly. Institutions and students could find themselves scrambling to understand and react to a historic policy shift under deadline.

Unlawful presence: A legal minefield

Legal professionals caution that the impact runs far beyond reapplication exhaustion. A notable alteration would involve the calculation of "unlawful presence." Current policy does not render foreign students unlawfully present except when there is a formal finding by USCIS or an immigration judge. But with this new rule as proposed, a student who exceeds the allotted time, even mistakenly, might start accumulating illegal presence from the day following the expiration of their visa. 

Sector opposition and factual inconsistencies

US higher education institutions are mounting a strong resistance. They contend that the policy is predicated upon a hyperbolic tale of student overstays. By the way, the overstay rate for F, M, and J visas was only 3.6% in 2023, a fraction compared to other visa types.

Arriving at a moment when Canada, the UK, and Australia are going out of their way to re-balance their student visa systems to appeal for international talent, the US action can be interpreted as retreat, not progress. For thousands of Indian families making long-term plans for higher studies overseas, the new rule can bring in multiple layers of complexity shifting the balance in favour of competing destinations.

Though its final shape will not be evident until its Federal Register appearance, the underlying message is one that cannot be misread: America is rethinking under what conditions it welcomes intellectual ability.

A clock ticking on certainty

What was once a system of visas founded upon intellectual advancement may soon be regulated by expiration dates and reapplication cycles. For Indian students, who have traditionally considered the US the gold standard of college education, the proposed change means more than a policy adjustment. It is a radical departure from the scholarly bargain, one that would reshape whom to study about in America, and at what price.

Jawaharlal Nehru University has cut international student fees by up to 80% with enrollments plummeting sharply. The fee structure will come into effect from this year and will largely hit students from SAARC countries who come to study in Delhi. The cut in tuition fees will be in the range of 33% to 80% and would vary according to courses as well as location.

The largest fee cuts have been offered to the SAARC nations, as well as to African and Latin American countries. It aims at minimizing financial burdens on those from the economically weaker segments.

Under the new system, SAARC students will only have to pay $200 for humanities courses and $300 for the science stream. Conversely, African countries as well as Latin American countries will see fees decrease by 80% to $400 to $300 for courses. West African students will, as has been reported, pay $500 for humanities courses and $600 for science courses. To the remaining students, fees have been cut to $1000 for humanities and $1250 for science.

All foreign students will also need to pay a one-time registration charge of $500.

What have been JNU fees until now?

The recent prospectus of the university had clearly mentioned that foreign students were to pay $1900 per semester as tuition fee for science courses and $1500 per semester for humanities and social sciences. This would comprise courses such as MTech, MPH, MA, MSc, MCA, BA(Hons), the BSc-M.Sc integrated programme as well as part-time programmes.

Meanwhile foreign students from SAARC countries will pay a significantly lower rate between $700 per term for science subjects and $600 for the others. Tibetan students, on the other hand, pay fees similar to Indian students.