LAHORE, Feb 10: Thousands of students thronged the Dawn Education Expo 2011 on the second and concluding day on Thursday and gathered information about various universities, their academic programmes, fee structure and scholarships.

The Dawn Education Expo’s last day saw large groups of students coming from local schools offering O and A Level and seeking information from various stalls.

Representatives of various universities told Dawn even a larger number of students visited the education exhibition on the second day and they registered hundreds of students to process their admission applications.

Talking to Dawn, Canadian University Application Centre director Lisa Roosen-Runge said a large number of A-Level students visited the stall and made queries about academic programmes in the disciplines of business, computer science, engineering and biomedical.

She said she told the students that Canadian universities offering undergraduate and postgraduate programmes had a continuous process of admissions, while only few programmes had certain deadlines for submitting applications. She said the Canadian universities had registered some 200 students, who wanted to apply and process their admission applications.

University of Glamorgan’s representative Maheen Mirza said students were inquiring more about fee structure and scholarships after identifying certain academic programmes of their choice. She said O-Level, A-Level, graduate and postgraduate level students visited the stalls.

Lahore City University president Mansoor Faisal said the exhibition provided a great opportunity to explain to students about the new higher education institution that was striving for students’ excellence in professional studies.

Lauding organisers for holding such a successful education exhibition, Mr Faisal said such events provided a unique opportunity for the students and university staff to interact with each other. He said such events could be made more meaningful by allowing students to directly interact with varsities’ faculty members.

Muhammad Sultan and Muhammad Jamil, students of a private school, said it was a great experience to visit such an education exhibition and see a large number of local and foreign universities’ representatives under one roof. They said they learnt about great educational opportunities at home and abroad. Sultan said he would focus more on his studies to ensure that he would be able to qualify for admission to foreign universities and earn scholarship. He said many universities were offering scholarships that could be tapped.

Nida Ali, an A-Level student who was visiting along with her class-fellows, said she and her friends got information about academic programmes, market trends at international level and visa requirements.

Stalls were set up by universities from across the world, including the UK, the USA, Canada and Pakistan.