Three Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) graduates have developed India’s first AI-powered admission platform to assist postgraduate students in securing admissions to top global universities. Ambitio helps students to identify the university that is right for them, complete applications, and write personal statements.
Since its inception in 2022, Ambitio has facilitated more than 175 students in securing admission to masters courses at institutions such as New York University, Carnegie Mellon University, Imperial College London, University of California – Berkeley, and more.
According to Dirghanyu Kaushik, Vikrant Shivalik and Vaibhav Tyagi, alumni of the Indian Institute of Technology – Banaras Hindu University (IIT-BHU) in Varanasi, Ambitio is based on proprietary technology that they have developed, based on deep research of international university admissions.
Co-founder Kaushik told University World News: “Common challenges encountered by candidates include deciding which university to apply to and determining where they stand the best chance of acceptance. While there are counsellors available to help, their fees can be unaffordable for many.
“The guidance provided by Ambitio and the platform we have developed are based on the insights and expertise of people who have excelled at top international universities,” he said, noting that with a network of more than 200 mentors from renowned universities (Top 50 QS) and companies worldwide, students using the platform “gain from bona fide firsthand experiences”.
Kaushik explained that the idea started with his own problems after he graduated from the IIT and was planning to do an MBA in the United States. “I started thinking about the admissions process and the type of course I can apply to and the process itself. I figured there are a lot of problems, and the process was so tedious and cumbersome,” he said.
Speaking with older students and alumni who were studying abroad, he noted: “all of them encountered similar problems but they felt there were no good affordable solutions for the issues the candidates usually face while applying for higher studies abroad”.
Gathering the data and building a platform
Other organisations, including a few universities in India, have introduced their own AI-assisted systems, based on existing technologies to better manage their admissions.
However, Kaushik said the AI technology that underpins Ambitio was “entirely proprietary, but for some of the JNI [Java Native Interface] things we are using AI language models” such as Llama 3, a large language model developed by Meta, and DaVinci by OpenAI, a machine learning model for natural language processing.
“First, we compiled the data from a lot of study abroad websites, including university websites. One of the good solutions that can advise students is The GradCafe, a very popular site for students. We used these multiple sources to build a large ‘school’ of higher education advice and the data points, and trained our models on them,” Kaushik explained.
“We meticulously analysed how we could enhance their [students’] chances of gaining admission to reputable institutions,” he added.
How AI is used
Kaushik explained: “We employ AI in two primary areas. Firstly, we utilise it to assist students in determining the most suitable programme or university currently available in the market. While there are existing filtration tools enabling students to filter courses they are eligible for and view them, we’ve taken an additional step – we incorporate [their] preferences into the equation.”
In other words, the AI strives to understand and integrate the individual preferences of each student into the recommendations it provides.
“We accomplish this through our proprietary recommendation engine, which has been trained on over 15 million acceptance and admit data points. While it’s certainly possible for students to conduct this research themselves by visiting numerous websites, reading various articles, and compiling the information manually, our platform streamlines this process significantly,” he maintained.
By synthesising and analysing the vast amounts of information, the platform delivers personalised recommendations quickly, saving students valuable time and effort.
The next step where AI comes in, is in helping students to write their personal essays. “We trained our model with 5,000 accepted essays from across universities,” Kaushik said.
“We begin by ensuring basic grammar and punctuation are correct. Beyond these fundamentals, we focus on delivery and specificity. Delivery pertains to how effectively the essay is conveyed as a whole, while specificity refers to its relevance to the [study] programme being applied for and the individual applicant’s profile.”
Pre-trained models such as DaVinci are used for this rather than ChatGPT. “We are using this application as we have trained our models on large data,” he noted. “Our model is now much more nuanced and tuned to assist the students in the admission parts. We have a decent amount of data and profiles about what makes a good essay,” he said.
“We ask students 12 to 15 questions … which should be ideally unique to each student. On the basis of those answers we create a template or structure of the essays they can essentially use for their college application,” he explained.
AI entrepreneurship
Kaushik initially streamlined the entire process and then presented his idea to his college friends, Shivalik and Tyagi, who “embraced it enthusiastically”. Subsequently the trio founded Ambitio. “We harnessed cutting-edge technology, including AI, to bring this vision to life,” he said.
He revealed: “This wasn’t my maiden foray into entrepreneurship.” Following graduation from IIT-BHU, Kaushik joined a start-up, taking charge of the entire product development effort, setting up both the tech and product teams from scratch.
He stressed that Ambitio strives to provide equal opportunity and access to high quality guidance and counselling – usually only available to those with financial means.
Its main service is provided free to students. However, the more personal phase of the admissions process, which requires “thorough management” of their essays and applications, requires a small paid subscription.
“Before reaching this phase, all other services, including identifying the most suitable college and applying for scholarships, are covered under the free subscription,” Kaushik said.
Student Shubhangi Sengar, who is pursuing a masters in business analytics at Columbia University in the US, said: “Securing an admit for the MBA program felt like a dream come true, and it wouldn't have been possible without the exceptional support from Ambitio.”
Another student, who requested that his name not be mentioned, said: “Ambitio helped me in understanding machine technology. I had engaged a counsellor before, but the experience was not to my satisfaction. However, Ambitio renewed my self-confidence and guided me to write essays which could help me in getting admission in the best institutes.”
Currently serving about 200 students, Ambitio’s target is to reach 2,500 students in the coming financial year. According to Kaushik, there are plans to diversify services by including undergraduate admissions, and so cater to a wider student cohort to become a more comprehensive admissions platform.
According to the Indian Student Mobility Report 2023 by Global Education Conclave, spending by Indian students studying abroad could reach US$70 billion by 2025. The report said the number of students studying abroad in 2023 was 1.3 million.