Click to play videoNew York: New York's Columbia University, an Ivy League school, is among the most popular destinations for students from India.
Officials here are at pains to point out that Monday's shooting rampage at Virginia Tech is not representative of the American university experience.
“Whenever these kinds of incidents happen there's certainly a lot of worry among students, and I can imagine also parents in India who are thinking of sending their children or have children on campuses here. For the most part this sort of stuff almost never happens and the chances that it will affect their children in America is very very rare. That's the message that has to go out. And also a lot of this is just bad luck and bad timing,” says Dean of students, Columbia Journalism School, Sreenath Sreenivasan.
Over 76,000 Indian students are studying in US universities at present. Last year that figure declined slightly over the previous year, but American schools are keen to attract more Indian students.
“There have been all these issues after 9/11 about general safety and access to visas. And I know the American government is making a lot of efforts to recruit and to increase the pool so that more Indians can come here and the American universities are targeting Indian students to come here. So hopefully this will not have an impact beyond the next few days,” says Sreenivasan.
Indian students account for over 13 per cent of international students in the US, the largest bloc in this category, followed by students from China, Korea and Japan.
Indian students on American campuses are aware that incidents like the shooting in Virginia Tech are likely to make their families back home more anxious. But they are also confident that these are largely isolated incidents and are not likely to affect their plans.
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