← Back to STEM Dashboard
India — Outbound Student Mobility
1.3 million Indian students abroad — the largest student diaspora on Earth. Two distinct pipelines: STEM (US/Canada/UK) and Medical (Central Asia/Caucasus).
1.34M
Indians Abroad (MEA 2024)
363,019
In US (Open Doors 2025)
392,810
In Canada (IRCC Dec 2024)
~25,000
Medical Students/yr Abroad
STEM & Higher Education Pipeline
Indian Students in US vs Canada 🔗
Canada surpassed the US as the top destination in 2022. Both are now declining — Canada under permit caps, US under policy uncertainty.
Source: IIE Open Doors (US), IRCC year-end stock (Canada)
Top Destinations (Latest Available) 🔗
US Field of Study (2023/24) 🔗
91% of Indian students in the US are in STEM. Math/CS alone is 43%.
US Study Level (SEVIS Mar 2026) 🔗
Master's students dominate — 277K of 350K active records. Doctorate is only 29K.
Growth by Destination (2015 = 100) 🔗
Canada grew 8x from 2015 to 2023 before declining. UK doubled. Germany tripled.
Medical Education Pipeline
The Medical Bottleneck: India has 2.3 million NEET applicants competing for ~112,000 domestic medical seats annually. This drives ~25,000 students per year to study MBBS abroad, primarily in Central Asia, the Caucasus, Russia, and the Philippines. On return, they must pass the FMGE exam — which has a pass rate of just 16.7% (2024).
Medical Students by Destination 🔗
Georgia and Kyrgyzstan are the largest destinations. China collapsed post-COVID. Ukraine lost ~18K students in 2022.
FMGE Pass Rate by Country (2024) 🔗
Georgia has the highest pass rate at 36%. Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine are under 15%. Overall: 61,616 candidates, 10,269 passed.
FMGE 2024 — Foreign Medical Graduate Examination
| Metric | Value |
|---|
| Total Candidates | 61,616 |
| Total Passed | 10,269 |
| Overall Pass Rate | 16.7% |
| NEET Applicants (annual) | 2,300,000 |
| Domestic Medical Seats | 112,112 |
| Estimated Annual Outbound | ~25,000 |
| China FMGE Candidates | 13,427 |
| China FMGE Passed | 2,580 (19.2%) |