Ajay Singh is Stoodnt’s Founder & Chief Executive Officer. Ajay has more than 20 years of experience in product design, development, strategy, and transformation.
He has led a number of successful businesses, product launches, and transformation projects across marketing, customer experience with companies such as American Express, Cendant, Intel, and Booz Allen spread globally.
Ajay has an MBA from Harvard Business School, M.S in Computer Engineering from Univ. of Texas at Austin and B.Tech (Electronics & Communication) from I.I.T Roorkee in India.
Question: What is Stoodnt? Why did you start this company?
Answer:
Stoodnt.com is a company dedicated to making dreams come true for aspiring college/graduate students. We are committed to providing the highest quality counseling services, college insights across the globe via a robust proprietary technology platform that we have developed. The idea really developed through a variety of personal experiences where I would be bombarded with counseling requests every time I would go back to India as well as here in the United States from friends.
I was also fortunate to having help from my brothers as I prepared to study in USA for my graduate studies. I believe and hope Stoodnt can be that help for millions of students who have the aspirations to study abroad but do not have access to help or advise from one of their close family members.
Question: Why do international students want to come to the United States? How many come and from where?
Answer:
The United States remains the top destination for students around the world. Over three-quarters of prospective students worldwide perceived the US to have a high quality higher education as well as a wide range of schools and programs to suit their needs. In a global workforce, American education is seen as a key strategic advantage.
A record 974, 926 students came to the United States in the 2014/2015 academic year that represented 10% growth, the highest growth in 35 years. India, China, and Brazil account for most of the growth in international students on U.S. campuses.
While China remains the top country of origin of international students in the U.S., increasing by 11 percent to 304, 040, India’s growth outpaced China’s this year, with students from India increasing by 29.4 percent to a record high of 132, 888. This is the highest rate of growth for Indian students in the history of the Open Doors project, which spans back to 1954/55. The last time India grew at a comparable rate (29.1) was in 2000/01 when the number of students from India exceeded 50, 000 for the first time. In 2014/15, China and India together accounted for 67 percent of the increase in international students, and they now constitute nearly 45 percent of the total number of international students in U.S. higher education.
We feel Stoodnt is perfectly positioned to take advantage of these trends.