Narrowing awareness gap by using e-learning tools for counselling university entrants

Higher Education is very crucial factor for the growth and development of individuals, and this contributes significantly to social, economic and scientific development of the country. Making an admission decision for higher education is a very challenging and critical for a student´s success, especially with the rapid increase in number of different options available. A questionnaire survey of more than 400 engineering college entrants in India, was conducted at the time of their counselling. The survey reveals that there is a need for counselling the entering students to help them better evaluate the different universities that they are considering for their under-graduate admissions, and making the students more aware of the different ranking parameters that are also used by several popular university ranking systems, nationally and internationally. We also discuss how the existing awareness gap can be narrowed using appropriate E-learning tools in order to improve the qualitative and quantitative variety of the learning environment as a whole.