Band 6+: The chart below shows the number of students from four different countries applying to European universities. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.

The bar chart illustrates how global enrollments varied across four different countries’ universities from 2004 to 2008.

Overall, there were two out of four surveyed nations experienced an upward trend, namely America and Japan, the former standing out as the primary destination in the final year. On the other hand, the remainder saw an opposite trend, except for Russia, which fluctuated over the period.

In 2004, a noticeable gap was seen between China and the USA, the former ranked first with 27500 students, almost double the latter. This pattern changed in 2006 when both countries had similar statistics of 17500 enrollments. After that, America overtook China and continued to rise, then registered the highest point at 27500 applicants in 2008, while its counterpart plummeted to over 15000 students.

There were not any considerable changes seen in the figures for Japan and Russia, these nations constituted 7000 and 3000 enrollments, respectively, at the starting point. Japan experienced a sustained increase, reaching around 10000 students in the final year. Regarding Russia, the figure witnessed a moderate fluctuation from 2500 to 3000 applicants throughout the surveyed period.