Folks, there used to be a Nepal where only two professions were considered the real profession-"dactari" and "engineering". Those who could not become one of them were considered plain loosers. People would tell you looser on your face because you studied science but could not become a "dactar" or an "enginer". I will not be surprised if this remains the case. At that time (pre 1990 and early 1990 era), Engineering college at Pulchowk used to have around 50 seats for Engineering and TUTH mere 25 seats for MBBS for several thousands ofaspiring IScs pumped out by science stream of TU. There was a consensus that entrance exams in those two institutions were very fair. Some of the cream of the crops used to get absorbed there. whoever could not make the above institutions, there used to be a few seats from ministry of education for countries like Bangladesh, Pakistan, USSR etc. They had eligibility criteria, but I am not sure how fair the selection process used to be. For the rest of the herd (no pun intended), several embassys were the last resort. The most interesting ones were the scholarships provided by Indian Embassy. There used to be a "Kumbha ko mela" in front of the embassy to register the forms. Almost everybody knew that you got to have some kick ass political connections to get those seats. However, I have come across lots of people who claim that they got it based on merit. I guess they gave soem seats based on merit too. I am pretty sure most of these scholorships were a means of Indian government to keep leaders under their influence. Most of the congree leaders sent their kids to India for medicine and engineering in these so called "cultural " seats even during Panchayat regime. Same was true for communist leader's offsprings, who instead got seats in USSR and other communist nations. For muslim leaders there was Pakistan. Sajhaites who held "sarkari jagir" in Nepal will be better suited to comment on hundreds of "seats" Nepal gets every year from countries including India, Japan, UK and US. These include seats for all "Nijamati sewa" including police and army. I have heard lots of "hanky panky" goes in the selection process. Please correct me if I am wrong. So this is the real picture I saw when I was in Nepal at that time. However, it would be highly unfair to generalize and blame every individual or his/her political parents who got those scholarships. For me it was like "Lasha ma sun chha kaan mero buchai" or rather "Bhir bata lade pani kilo rittai, Baghi le khaye pani kilo rittai"-