MOSCOW, January 13. /TASS/. Russia is seeing huge interest from abroad for its government-funded university scholarship program, with some 70,000 foreigners putting in applications to study in the country, Rossotrudnichestvo head Yevgeny Primakov told TASS.

"At present, the number of active applications is already around 70,000. Amid this surge of interest, about 150 new candidates submit applications every hour," he said.

Primakov specified that the most popular fields of study "have traditionally been medicine, followed by computer science and engineering, economics, management, law, international relations, electrical engineering and power engineering, information security, software engineering, and psychology."

"Foreign citizens most often choose Peoples’ Friendship University, the Higher School of Economics, Saint Petersburg State University, Bauman State Technical University, Kazan Federal University, I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University, ITMO University, Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, Ural Federal University, and Moscow Polytechnic University," he said. "The countries with the highest number of applications are Angola, Sudan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Belarus, Bangladesh, China, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Egypt, Algeria, and Benin," Primakov added.

Rossotrudnichestvo also reminded candidates that the deadline for submitting applications to study in Russia is January 15.