PONE-D-23-08845

‘College Choice’ under the COVID-19 pandemic: Sustainability of Engineering Campuses for future enrollments.

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Mahajan,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

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JOANNA ROSAK-SZYROCKA, Assistant Professor

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: In their research, the authors are focusing on a less-researched topic of how the preferences of prospective students changed after the covid. The research is really gap-filling and provides a comprehensive overview and dynamics of the engineering higher education in India and internationally too.

The title covers and reflects the content, the abstract is compact and clear, the keywords are relevant.

The introduction sets the topic and the research into context, presents the motivation and the research goals as well.

The literature review is not just going about processing the relevant sources but provides a theoretical framework too, in a very detailed and structured way.

The methodlogy is described and introduces very detailed too. The authors selected the appropriate methodological toolset for executing this research, and applied it well.

The results are supported by the methods and provides clears and well understandable information and explanations.

Conclusions are based on the results, implications and limitations are presented as well.

Reviewer #2: I think the paper is very interesting and it’s contribute to the new knowledge in the field. It’s good prepared based on the extensive literature analysis and use various statistical methods to data analysis.

There are following problems worth improving in the paper:

• In the theory please describe more about relations between sustainability and COVID pandemic. How the pandemic have impacted various problems connected with sustainability.

• In the methodology describe in brief statistical methods used in the paper.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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‘College Choice’ under the COVID-19 pandemic: Sustainability of Engineering Campuses for future enrollments.

PONE-D-23-08845R1

Dear Dr. Prashant Mahajan,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

JOANNA ROSAK-SZYROCKA, Assistant Professor

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

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