Harvard, Stanford, Yale to accept PTE scores

Harvard, Stanford, Yale to accept PTE scores

Ivy League institutions like Harvard and Yale along with other renowned varsities like Stanford, INSEAD and the Indian School of Business and organisations such as the UK Border Agency will now be accepting Pearson’s PTE Academic scores.
PTE Academic — the English language test developed by Pearson Education — was launched eight months ago and is in the process of being recognised by more than 1500 programmes worldwide. It is endorsed by the Graduate Management Admission Council GMAC, the owners of the Graduate Management Admission test GMAT.


“We have a 10-year plan for the test and are targeting 3 per cent of the academic English market in India which is currently 200,000 students. For us, the testing parameters are listening, reading, writing and speaking and all these four modules can be tested in three hours,” said John K Philip, Regional Director (SAARC Countries), Pearson Language Tests.
The computer-based test is delivered on a ‘choose and book’ basis rather than on fixed dates and test takers can schedule their appointment just 24 hours before their test and results are delivered in two business days, according to Pearson.
Pearson is in talks with both Indian and foreign universities that accept international students and where English is the preferred language of teaching.
Moreover, Pearson has also tied up with almost 100 test preparation centres across the country and also offers online tests for students. The unscored practice tests are for free while the scored ones cost $20 (Rs 950) each.


Source Link: http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/harvard-stanford-yale-to-accept-pte-scores/401077/

Reliance ADA VC firm ties up with MIT, Stanford

Reliance ADA VC firm ties up with MIT, Stanford

Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group promoted venture capital (VC), Reliance Venture Asset Management (RVAM), has forged a strategic collaboration with two prestigious universities — Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Stanford University — by sponsoring their entrepreneurship competitions and start-up programmes.
RVAM has associated itself with the Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students (BASES) for the latter’s business plan competition ‘e-challenge’ besides participating in one of BASES’ flagship programmes titled e-Bootcamp — a three day intensive entrepreneurship workshop. It has also invested in two MIT start-ups.
As part of an exclusive India arrangement, RVAM will mentor winners of MIT’s $100,000 Entrepreneurship Competition for the 2010 and offer opportunities to develop business ideas in emerging countries such as India through its incubator programme.
“These are formal collaborations for perpetuity under which no Indian VC other than RVAM can associate with MIT and Stanford for their respective entrepreneurship competitions as the India partner. Through these, we want to promote collaborative Indo-US investments,” says Harshal J Shah, CEO and board member, RVAM.
Since its inception in 2006, the company has closed 13 deals and is sector, stage and geography agnostic in approach. The company usually makes investments to the tune of $1-15 million (Rs 4.7-70 crore) this being its investment sweet spot. It has $50 million (Rs 235 crore) slated for investment this year and targets to fund 3-6 companies, of which it has already invested in two-Tessolve Services and ReverseLogistics.
Though RVAM has partnerships with the IITs and IIMs, Shah says Indian start-ups are based on technology-enabled models while foreign start-ups revolve around technology-creation models and are more R&D driven.
“The reason why we associated with MIT is because two of our portfolio companies Scalable Display and Dhama Apparel are start-ups from MIT, and with Stanford, because Stoke Inc — one of our portfolio companies — uses technology developed by Stanford,” he adds.

Source Link: http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/reliance-ada-vc-firm-ties-upmit-stanford/398083/