Ivy League & Life Lessons with Vibha Kagzi

Vibha Kagzi: Thank you so much, and big fan of what you're doing, and really happy that you're providing a conduit for people to get the right access and right information. So firstly, congratulations on your endeavour and super excited to have this conversation. 

Vibha Kagzi: The pause has actually been lifted, as you know. Will it come back? It could come back. 

There is a little bit of volatility in terms of signalling from the US government. The pause came towards the end of May. A lot of application decisions had already come through in December, January, February, and up to March. So interestingly, a lot of students had already applied for and received their student visas. 

So I think it was more from an optics perspective and sort of a signalling perspective that the government said, “Hey, we're gonna pause these to sort of put out a very firm stance.” 

There's two aspects to it. One is the scrutiny, and one is enforcing that you make your social media profiles public. That's really the clincher. 

You know, scrutiny has always happened. Colleges will also review your  Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter profiles. This has been happening for years. Even the universities always went through, and from a hygiene perspective, we'd always advocate for students to clean up their digital footprints in any case, regardless of the Trump administration. 

For me, the big clincher is the fact that they want you to make them public. It's mandatory, but if you look at the fine print, what the fine print says is that the consular offices are going to look for posts,  comments, or associations that indicate hostility towards the US, connections with banned groups or hateful commentary. 

Now, put yourself or put myself in the position of the administration of any country. That seems fair. I don't want to bring somebody into my borders who's hostile towards me or is connected with band groups, right? So, that is really the official line that they are toeing. 

Now,  if you are somebody who fosters hostility towards the US, then it's probably not the right country for you to go to. Go study in Germany, go study in Singapore, stay in India. Now it's being interpreted saying, “Hey, but you are crossing a line, you know,  more happened to my privacy and my rights.” But really, what they're saying is as long as you're not associated with any hateful commentary,  banned groups or facilities towards the country, they're okay. 

So I think people have also, you know, they're reading too deeply into the fine print, but if you, if you take the fine print for what it is on an as-is basis, it doesn't sound like it's really too radical. I don't think,  honestly, the curriculum is so intense at high schools and at university level to get into these colleges in America that I really don't think there are that many students harbouring hatred or you know, part of banned groups. 

And if they are, then fair enough, the US isn’t the right place for them in any case.  

Vibha Kagzi: That's the job of organisations like ours. 

At ReachIvy, obviously, we are staying tuned to all the developments that are happening. We are also advocating students to apply to multiple countries. So while we are not suggesting that you dismiss the US, we are definitely saying, “Hey, widen the option pool, and also look at countries like Singapore, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Ireland, etc.”

The issue is that the statements are volatile, and they're not taking a very firm stance. They say something, then they pull back. 

You know, this whole tussle with Harvard University, where they took a very firm stance saying, we are now gonna ban international students, we are banning your funding to now them mellowing last week, saying, hey, we are gonna reach a truce, and we are gonna provide full access to international students. 

It leads to a lot of confusion, and that was really the issue: the confusion and the lack of clarity. 

And to address that, we are telling students, look, we don't really know. So keep options open. At the very last moment when you finally have to take the call, at that point, you assess the situation. 

Now that being said, there's enough turmoil going on in different parts of the world as well.  You know, something could happen here in India as well. So, are you really at any point fully protected from the universe and everything that goes on? 

Probably not. So we're saying be ready for some, some level of volatility, but we are pretty certain that closer to decision time, they are gonna put out a very strong statement. 

As of now, the universities are saying, “Look, it's all clear. If you were planning to come this fall to a US  university, everything is clear. You're very welcome.” And they're putting out a very strong statement from the college's perspective, like, all is well, please come and we're gonna take care of everything. 

So the universities are at least providing a very clear green signal to students, which is very comforting.  

Vibha Kagzi: Historically, the United States, you know, if you look at the data from the last 15 years, has always been the No. 1 study abroad destination, not just for Indian students, but globally. 

One wonders why would you put this sort of preference and prominence. It's cuz the universities have been around for centuries.  You know, Harvard University's been around for over 400 years. 

So, one, they have this legacy of international education. Two, their cutting-edge research. And three, most importantly, really, why education for most people going abroad is a means to an end. And that end being employability. It's not education for the sake of education. It's really saying, “Hey, I will go get a degree in the United States or the UK or wherever to finally get a job.” 

And it was that employment contract, that is, sort of, a light at the end of the tunnel, where you see so many immigrants move to the US and then sort of transform their lives. 

Now, when you're saying, you know, how do you future-proof this? This is the future-proofing that is the underlying reason why people leave  India and go abroad, right? That's the future proofing from a country perspective, and that future proofing is still very much alive and kicking in the US and globally. 

Right now, every country goes through its wave. Canada went through its immigration wave and said, “Hey, now we're gonna stop.” The UK went through its wave. So, I think as the new administrations come through, they assess as of that point, how many people do they want in, how protectionist do they want to go as a country? What is the current climate? 

So going to these countries is really a function of, you know, at what point did you apply and what cycle and what wave, you know, it's an economic cycle. 

So this, this again, is an economic cycle where they say, “Hey, we want to be a little protectionist. We wanna protect our borders.” 

But if you look at a macro trend of future proofing from an education and geographical perspective, the United States provides that future proofing, right? You end up going there, you end up getting those jobs, and you end up really making a massive fundamental shift in your socioeconomic strata and potentially even from that perspective.

Now, the second question you asked is from a degree perspective,  right? From a “How do you future-proof what you're studying”  perspective. AI is transforming the world. There was a recent McKinsey report said that 85 per cent of the jobs that come out in 2030 don't even exist today. You know, so future-proofing for an environment like this sounds sort of impossible. 

But I just published a book called Break the Career Code, and I spent almost a year and a half talking with experts, professors, and industry experts across the world, and really, what came out of the book in terms of sectors to tap into. 

Sustainability is a big theme; Green energy, green fashion, green tech — there's like a wave of green that's gonna sweep through over the next five, seven years. Space technology is a huge, huge field. While there's all this land grabbing going on here for so many centuries on Earth, and then you look at space and you say, “Oh my God, that has multiples of land, space or air space that's also available for grabs. Right now, no one owns anything in space because, as of now, the laws don't allow anybody to own anything. But the minute the laws come through and there's more certainty, they've started space travel, they're setting up hospitals in space because the gravitational pull is reversed in outer space. So, a lot of transplants, stem cells, all that stuff, you can do a lot of things in outer space that you can't do here on Earth. 

And then if you're in technology, then technology's not going anywhere. There's a big debate about whether computer science is gonna be a future-proof career to pursue. 

There's a debate around this because people are like, “Oh, well, if AI can code for you, then why do I need to become a computer scientist? Sort of redundant skillset…” 

But I still believe that understanding how code works allows you to think in a certain way. And I'm not a developer or coder, and when I look at the AI tools that exist for non-developers, so to speak, they still overwhelm me and baffle me. I'm just like, oh, I can't just go up here and, you know, build a sophisticated, solid website. 

Tech, computer science, whatever form of AI they're teaching — a lot of universities have introduced AI curricula. There are degrees now; you major in AI. You know, the efficiency of that curriculum is still questionable, right?  Because it's evolving so fast, the technology. You put something in your curriculum in semester one, and by semester three, the technology is redundant, but at least it sets up a base, you know? 

It gives you a base understanding of the models and how things work.  And once you have that base, it's evident that the base will become very different from what you are studying today, but at least you build on that base, and it enables you to then keep up with the transformations that are gonna happen.

Vibha Kagzi: Oh, this is a fabulous question. So the Ivy League colleges, you know, do they really stand up for what they project and what we perceive?  

From the outside, having been through a very intense curriculum at one of the Ivy League schools myself, it's funny, I was also sceptical. 

I was like, you've seen the brochures and you've heard about this university and you've seen the shows on television, and you're like,  man, this all seems like a bit of fluff. So I went in as a sceptic, what is it about this university? And really, when you go, you realise, “Yes, it's the curriculum,” but the curriculum today is, you know, it's on the internet.

You can go to Khan Academy or Coursera and figure curriculum. 

The professors! They manage to secure some of the finest professors in the world. 

If you leave aside curriculum, reputation, credibility, brand and faculty, the one thing that really shines out in the  Ivy League universities is the kind of talent that they're able to attract. 

Because of this sort of perceived hype that these Ivy Leagues are a haven for some of the smartest people, some of the most wired people,  some of the people who are most interested in research, and the high threshold they set from admissions rate and the single digits every year consistently, then you're just like, wow. If you're gonna reject over 90 per cent of the people who are applying to your university, you can imagine the kind of talent pool there is. 

And I was just on Harvard's campus a few weeks ago at my reunion. And it really just reminded me once again of just the sheer brilliance that you surround yourself by when you are going through the curriculum, and then for the rest of your life, right? 

Because then that becomes your new sort of peer group, friend circle,  benchmark, aspirational crew. And that's really the big link show. 

Now, the Ivy Leagues; they are a small set of universities, right, that get tagged under the Ivy League. Now, to me, that's the part that's a bit unfair because are you really seeing that there's like only these handful of universities that are the best? 

No, the Ivy League was just a League of colleges that played football with one another. They got branded as the Ivy League, and then they made this brand really big. MIT is not an Ivy League university. Right. The Ivy Leagues are just eight colleges on the East Coast of America. MIT is on the East Coast in Massachusetts, but not part of the League, because they didn't play football. Stanford's not part of the Ivy League schools, either. UC Berkeley, Caltech, Stanford or the West Coast, not part of the Ivy League. All phenomenal universities.  Carnegie Mellon, University of Michigan — not part of the Ivy League. All the liberal arts colleges, Amherst College, Swarthmore, etc, are not part of the Ivy League. 

Are these top-tier colleges attracting top-tier talent, professors, etc? Absolutely yes. So I feel like if we could just expand the Ivy League into like the Ivy League Plus and really think of the universities in a wider spectrum, then absolutely yes. But do the Ivy Leagues themselves stand for excellence? Absolutely yes.  

Vibha Kagzi: So see, a lot of times when parents are planning to send their kids abroad, it normally is not a flippant decision where they say okay, next year my child's gonna graduate. Like, especially a country like us, where a significant portion of the household wallet is dedicated to education. People will live in a smaller home, but their homes as collateral tone down on vacation, material goods, etc, education comes first and foremost. 

In a country and a culture like India, people start saving towards their education at a very early age. A lot of the banks in India start these insurance policies.  There's this early mindset to start saving for what they know is coming, right? There's no mystery around your child turning 17 or 18 and then going to college, or turning 21 and then going to grad school. 

So fortunately, the timelines on this are very, very visible. So people plan in advance. 

Secondly, there has been an outburst of private sector banks in India and public sector banks tapping into the foreign education market. But honestly, just because financially it just makes a lot of sense when you are funding and supporting students who are gonna go to top-tier universities. Because you make a sweet spread as a banker on your interest rate, and the probability of default is very low, considering the student is actually gonna go to a top-tier university. So this has become a rampant business in both the public and private sector banks. Then come the NBFCs, as you mentioned, there's a large spectrum of NBFCs that are also supporting. 

There are a lot of university merit and need-based scholarships. So if you really need the money and if you're really smart, first, the university will look at how smart you are and sort of the merit component. And then a lot of times they say, “Hey, we really just want you, what's it gonna take to get you here?” So when you apply to the colleges, you have to submit three years of income statements, household, mother, father, and whoever else exists in that family. And once they do an assessment, depending on the university, their grant budget, which is why the Trump administration, you know, slicing of the grants became such a big deal.  Then there are universities that will literally pay for you to come to their colleges. 

We've also seen cases of crowdfunding. You can put out your profile, and if you're really deserving is very interesting people will actually pay for you to go to college. 

Then, of course, people negotiate with their employers, right? So if you tell your employer, “Hey, look, I've just got into NYU for my MBA, and if you sponsor me, I will commit to coming back to you for two years,” we see a lot of those cases happening. Larger firms like the consulting firms, McKinsey, BCG, etc., have this sort of thing embedded into their system. It’s a standard program that from McKinsey you go, and McKinsey pays for it, but there's a clause that you have to come back and work with McKinsey. 

So there's all these various forms of financing that have emerged in the last few years, and we see more and more of these innovations coming 

through. So, financing your education has become, you know, it wasn't like this. If you literally look back a decade ago, it was not so simple. But  I feel like now the financing component has become easier. It's getting into the universities that's becoming more and more competitive.  

Vibha Kagzi: So, about this cultural isolation and mental health challenges, when I first left for the US, I had never been to the United States. I'd only seen pictures of Walt Disney and the stuff that you see when you think of America, and you land up in an  American college and you're like, oh, wow. 

First of all, there was no social media, and email had just sort of emerged. We had pen pals whom we'd write letters to.  Now, fast forward all these years, living in a different landscape, right? With the advent of social media rampant, rapid access to information. 

When I look at my niece, who's 12, fully plugged into Western culture, music, food, fashion, skincare, all of it. So I feel like this cultural isolation that used to exist, and yes, it was a problem, but with the advent of this sort of media explosion, we are watching American shows, right? Netflix didn't exist 20 years ago. 

Today, everyone's watching the same shows globally, so you know what Thomas Friedman talked about in terms of flattening. I feel like there's a real, real flattening happening right now. 

That being said, you could come from a situation or a context where you probably weren't that exposed to this sort of culture, or even if you watched it on 

television, it still seemed external to you. For people like that, there are well-trained mental health counsellors. 

So one is the cultural component, which I feel like cultural really isn't so much of a big deal. But yes, mental health is definitely a theme that needs to be addressed, which has nothing to do with the cultural aspect. It could be from just being away from home, or other peer pressure that may arise on Indian campuses or international campuses. 

A lot of universities have helped set up 24/7 helplines. They have walk-in clinics that you should be aware of. A lot of them will do a cultural orientation before you start school, and I strongly recommend that all international students and actually even local students, attend the orientation programs because that really provides a sort of synthesis of cultures and understanding. 

A lot of colleges will also appoint counsellors who are from different cultures, so there's a cultural orientation or cultural sense of like, “Oh,  okay, this child is coming from Korea, then this is a kind of stress (they might face),” so there has to be some sort of cultural understanding as well. They are also constantly doing workshops on resilience, homesickness, and academic stress. 

There's also, you know, if you're, let's say, in a math class and you're struggling, there'll always be a TA who's a teaching assistant who you can access. There'll be office hours by the professors, and a lot of the stuff is a little hidden. But if you go out and seek the support, because the colleges have been seeing this now for so many years, and yes, they tweak it basis, you know what's really relevant at this point. 

But mental health is really number one on the agenda of the colleges because, even from their perspective, they don't want any campus suicides or campus issues. And more importantly, you know, on a larger scale, they really don't want graduates coming out of their universities who are depressed or unwell or anxious because then they're not productive in the workforce and then they don't really become alumni that colleges are gonna go out and support or be proud of, etc. So they realise that, you know,  everything begins at home, which is the school campus. And then from providing that sort of safe space and access to resources will really lead to a holistic individual who comes out of that university. 

Vibha Kagzi: I feel, really: Resilience. We're living in an era where everything changes. Who would've imagined anything like ChatGPT coming in and changing our world? And it's like ChatGPT is just like the early days of this technology, and this is just gonna evolve. You know, there are all sorts of reports of workforces being eliminated or changing. 

You know, are we gonna have jobs? Are we gonna have companies that provide basic sustenance? Will it happen in three years or five, or 10? We don't know. Will it happen? It's gonna happen, right? Like the changes are obvious and inevitable. What this is gonna require is. You know, there's resilience, but resilience doesn't mean literally like saying, oh, I have a very firm mind and I will be resilient, or I'm physically resilient, I'm gonna, the gym. Resilience stems from just having a continuous learning mindset. 

Again, having the mindset doesn't mean much. The mindset needs to be acted upon. So what do you do if you are a resilient learner? You continuously take courses, you upskill. If you haven't gone online and tinkered with AI, if you're not using AI  on a sort of almost daily basis, you have to sort of be up to speed with the current trend — knowing very well that hey, you know, in three months this so-called current trend will also be redundant and I'll have to catch the next wave. 

So I feel like being curious and having this mindset of continuous learning is gonna be super helpful, and it'll just enable you to sort of fearlessly pivot. 

If you're able to pivot saying, “Oh, I always thought of myself as a social media, like a content person. And I'm not required anymore because social media content comes through, GPT, can I pivot fearlessly and upscale and move to something else?”, I'm talking about the resilience from a continuous learning and curiosity perspective. 

The minute you develop that, then no matter what you studied at college and no matter what, because either way, that information and knowledge will become redundant as you prepare yourself for what's coming.  

Vibha Kagzi: Yeah, this is a really good question, and I get asked this question a lot by lots of parents and students as well. 

At the core of it, I grew up in India, right? So I love my country. I've decided to come back and live here. 

It saddens me to see that even 20  years later, there's is mass exodus of students, you know, having to forcefully go abroad because the option pools in India are still very limited. You know, the curricula are now, they're beginning to get a little bit more updated, but they largely, they've largely been stoic.

But before we get into the curriculum, let's take a step back and talk about how you are admitted to a college in India. Everything hinges upon, you know, when you're in school, it's your board exam. How did I do on the CBSE/ICSE/SSC or whatever board you went to? That one exam is the culmination of like first to 10th grade, and everything hinges on is one exam. So we are dealing with the stress, the pressure, the coaching classes, tuitions, etc, just for one exam. Why? 

Because that one exam determines where I'll spend the next two years. Then, as the next exam, my HSC, the so-called 12th grade, now it's become IB or A levels or HSC or ISC, whatever board you go to, but once again, it's the outcome of that one exam that then decides your next step. 

If you decide to go to the IITs or sit for the NEET if your medical, etc, then even these have no relevance, then it is the outcome of one singular test that determines the outcome of everything else. 

So the obligation process, in my mind, is bizarre, and the amount of pressure, and therefore this rise of this coaching industry, and Kota as a hub, etc, to me, is bizarre, right? 

When you apply to international schools, they look for everything. They look for evidence from the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th. They look for your grades across the years; they will forgive a weak grade if it's balanced with something else. They're looking for extracurriculars,  holistic profiles, and leadership positions, like were you head boy, sports captain, whatever, or have you done any research? So it's more sort of a holistic. It's also forgiving in some ways, saying, “Hey, we will forgive a low grade in the ninth, but we wanna see sort of four years of consistent data validating your high school experience versus a one entrance test.” 

Now, let's assume I crack the IITs, and I enter the IITs. I'm gonna get a degree thrown at me based on my rank. That again, to me, is bizarre because, you know, the ranking system is like, “Oh, the top hundred students or whatever will get computer science. The next will get mechanical.” I don't have any control over my intended major, just because the IIT system doesn't allow for this sort of preference. 

Then you end up at the college and you realise that while the IQ is very strong of these candidates — you know, I've been running an IT internship program in my organisation for the last nine years, and as we  

speak, I have three interns in the office. Very high IQ, very sweet people, firstly. Soft skills and communication? Very, very low. 

The colleges don't train them in communication. So in an office setup, while they might be doing all the hard work, in the meeting room, they're not able to convey what they're actually doing. The application process, the degree allocation and the lack of soft skills. These are like my three big moot points with the Indian education system.

Vibha Kagzi: A lot of people make the mistake of trying to tap into a network when they really need somebody, but I think we need to make that shift from saying, “Hey, let me build a network before I need the network.” And that's because it seems bizarre saying Hey I don't really need anyone in government, so why should I build a network? 

But, and the other thing with, with, you know, a lot of people think of networking is like, Hey, what can I get? What am I gonna get from talking to you? What am I gonna get from, you know, sort of sending you a note or helping you or whatever. [coughs] 

You know, in these conversations I always explain to people that the efficient way of building a network is to shift the mindset from getting to giving. If you wanna build a successful network, focus on what is it that I can offer to an individual. 

That's it. That is a one-sided equation, as far as you're concerned. The more you focus on, “what am I able to contribute? Am I able to contribute to someone's mental well-being? Am I able to contribute to someone from a materialistic perspective? Am I able to contribute from a well-being perspective? Am I able to just invite somebody over for a coffee, go for a jog with someone, you know, invite someone to a concert?” What have you got to offer? 

And the minute you shift the lens to offering as opposed to receiving, you will build a phenomenal network because the receiving will come automatically. You know, like the receiving is secondary and it's sort of automatic and magical. Really, just focus on the giving, and then the networks build seamlessly. 

And the minute you have those networks in this sort of disruptive, ever-evolving universe, it's the networks you would lean on, right? The network in for your next job, the network, when you're going through a downturn in your emotional behaviour and say, “Hey, I'm just looking for a couple of friends to just have, you know, a night out with.” 

Those networks could be of various forms, shapes, power, influence,  monetary aspects. It doesn't really matter because, you know, as we live our lives, you realise, you know, it's not just network doesn't mean just somebody really rich and wealthy who is well connected. It also just means having a shoulder to cry on, you know?

So I would suggest build a network along the spectrum and to focus on the giving rather than receiving.

Vibha Kagzi: Thank you.