United States Consul-General for South India David T Hopper has said India is one of the top ten destinations for the US students to pursue their studies.

Addressing the students of American College at Chathirapatti, near Madurai on Wednesday evening, he said similarly Indian students preferred to study in the US. Of the 5,83,000 students from about 200 countries studying in the US, Indians numbered 83,833, constituting 14.4 per cent, the largest single foreign group.

Hopper said most of the US students chose to study in the UK, Italy, Spain and France, besides India. About 2,23,000 US students were studying abroad and the number had grown by ten per cent a year in the past decade.

He said that in the US, women graduated from high school at the rate of 87 per cent, compared to 85 per cent by men.

Education alone would empower women and one of the best investments in the world would be to send girls to school. Giving a 13-year-old girl five more years of education could help to reduce the mortality rate of her children by 40 per cent, he opined.

Earlier, he declared open new buildings of the additional campus of the American College.