Qodari: 388 Students from Sekolah Unggul Garuda Accepted into World's Top Universities

Jakarta – Head of the Government Communication Body (Bakom RI), Muhammad Qodari, said that 388 students from Sekolah Unggul Garuda Transformasi have been accepted into the world’s best universities for the 2025/2026 academic year.

“The clearly measurable impact of this programme is the surge in students from Sekolah Unggul Garuda Transformasi who successfully passed the selection to enter the world’s top overseas universities, rising 177 percent from 140 students in the 2024/2025 academic year to 388 students in 2025/2026,” Qodari said at a press conference on Wednesday, 19 August 2026.

The universities in question include the University of New South Wales in Australia, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, the University of Toronto in Canada, and the University of California Berkeley in the United States. Also included are the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, Wageningen University and Research in the Netherlands, and Paris Sciences et Lettres in France.

Qodari said that student talent development is carried out through cooperation with overseas universities and various education partners. The programme includes SAT and IELTS preparation, strengthening foreign language skills, personal branding and essay writing training, character building, facilitation of applications to the world’s top universities, and collaborative STEM research.

Other achievements can be seen from the Garuda Scholarship 2026, which has placed 515 recipients at various top universities worldwide. Of that number, 370 recipients came from the first wave and 145 from the second wave.

Australia is the most popular destination with 138 recipients, followed by Singapore with 72, Canada with 70, domestic universities with 140, Hong Kong with 38, the United States with 20, and the United Kingdom with 17. Other recipients are spread across the Netherlands, China, South Korea, Belgium, and France.

Sekolah Unggul Garuda is divided into two schemes: Sekolah Unggul Garuda Baru and Sekolah Unggul Garuda Transformasi. Sekolah Unggul Garuda Baru is a formal upper secondary education unit that also serves as a work unit of the Ministry of Higher Education, Science, and Technology, with a focus on preparing excellent graduates with global competitiveness, particularly in STEM fields.