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The golden key to is to learn the language at least to conversational level, that will make your access to society and connecting with people tremendously easier. Next and quite important is to adopt their culture, that will without question make most welcome you into their hearts.
Still accept the fact that you will always be the foreigner, for when push comes to shove, you are the outsider, especially in difficult situations like conflict.
I did however choose to stay living abroad. As I married a local and had kids, I created a bit of my own family here too.
Family
>Though secretly, it was to give hope to the students who were defeated by the education system and told “You can’t study Computer Science, because you didn’t know Carbon has a radioactive isotope.” Forgive me if I'm being elitist here, but this seems like a strange example of outrageous admission requirements. I would have thought knowing about radiocarbon dating (which I'm assuming this is a reference to) is common…
It reads to me like this was on the exam for getting into the CS program in particular, though. Which makes it sound like IIT has dealt with the very large number of students who want to study CS by trying to limit it to the overall academically strongest students?
"vestibular" in Brazil, "gaokao" in China, the JEE (Joint Entrance Examination) in India. Those are the keys to upper middle class and they are guarded jealously. In my case to get in CS at a top university in Brazil there were 30 students applying for each spot in the Major in that year.
It is often used as a measurement "X per spot" for different majors to say how hard it is to get in. Some majors like Medicine can reach 200/spot. And trust me since most people have to pay to get those tests the less prepared students don't even bother because they know they won't pass. A lot of people also go for an easier-to-get-in major than the one they want hoping they can do an internal transfer after getting in (people apply for Pharmacy major in order to transfer to Medicine for example). Pretty much all majors at the top universities have at least 5 per spot, even the useless ones (which won't get you a job either).
It is grueling, it is not uncommon to see people crying in the hallways after the exams and occasionally suicides directly linked to the exams. There is such a glut of graduates and such a lack of jobs that unless you go to one of the top schools you won't get a good job or you will have to endure years at bad jobs to get experience before moving on to a good job.
Oh yeah, also student loans? Forget it, you have to pay for yourself, so hope you live close to the uni or daddy can cover your living costs. At least in Brazil (and I believe in China and India as well?) tuition is free at the top unis.
But a few points: * The magnitude of shit some people are putting up with for visa-status is mind-boggling. Their entire life is oriented around visa-status, to the point where I would think they should do the research on whether their quality of life will be improved back home due to the lower stress, even with the much lower salary and the growing pains of a developing country.
* A lot of people have successfully FIREd and then come back to live what I call the America Return Quasi-Suburban life - basically a copy of the McMansion life of the states inside a gated community in one of the major cities.
* New grads nowadays don't try to move abroad immediately (at least in the top-tier colleges). They do get good jobs and are paid very well, considering both historic trends as well as the purchasing power of the average Indian.
* There is a ton of FOMO and moving abroad is still a very strong sentiment, even among people who make more money than what I was making back when I worked in the states in a MCOL city. Considering the extremely poor management of most Indian cities (at a civic admin level) and the bling of social media, I expect this feeling to persist well into the future.
* Indian start-ups and venture are more short-sighted (in terms of path to revenue/IPO) than US venture. AFAIK no company in India has the equivalent of a Goog funding 20% projects or a VC like Thiel willing to fund research ideas. I don't think it is a money problem (going by the amount of money being pumped into quick-commerce or quick-anything) but a culture problem and also the people funding the start-ups. Again, I hope this will get resolved in the future but as of now, India still bleeds most of their higher-science and PhD crowd to the US. The Indian PhD scene is quite dim, with funding issues and what-not. So your contingent of PhDs who go on to start-up is not gonna happen here.
* OP here came back because he couldn't miss being close to family and close friends. There is a strong contingent of immigrants who can't stand living with or even close to family. For them, the visa and distance barrier is a plus.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
India is orders of magnitude better than most African countries. At the very least it’s safe and you can make a living. Indians actually move back to India after living in the west which doesn’t happen with Africans all that often.
The average GDP per capita in Africa as of 2024 is around $2400 ( https://www.statista.com/statistics/1300864/gdp-value-per-ca... ), in India it's around $2700 ( https://www.statista.com/statistics/263776/gross-domestic-pr... ). A difference but certainly not orders of magnitude. Africa has some really dirt-poor places but so does India. The homocide rate in Africa is higher, around 13/100k vs 3/100k in India, but th…