The Journal of Medical Education and Development

Introduction: The aim of the study was to determine the effective factors on choosing universities and countries abroad for studying by graduated students.

Method: It was a descriptive-analytical study. This study was performed on 160 graduates who referred to the Center for Educational Services, Ministry of Health and Medical Education and International Conference Center of Iran during the year 2013. The data were gathered through the questionnaire prepared by the researcher. The internal consistency of the questionnaire in all of the subscales was confirmed using Cronbach alpha and it was more than 7%. To determine the main factors affecting on preferences in studying abroad, single-sample T-test and to determine the priority of each factor Friedman test was used.

Results: Most of the participants (%64.3) were males. The average impact of science and technology factors was 2.91 and the average impact of factors related to admitting students was 1.83. The impact of factors related to student admission, social and cultural factors, science and technology and economic factors on the preference of studying in universities abroad on the perspective of graduates were meaningful (P-value 0.001).

Conclusion: The findings of this study revealed that among main factors of preferences of graduates about studying abroad, science and technology factors had the highest impact and the student admission factor had the lowest impact. Among the science and technology factors, the factors related to more facilities on the Internet access and lack of restriction on accessing to sites were the most important factors for studying abroad.

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