Home-schooled girl rejected by IIT gets into MIT

Image Courtesy: DNA

Time and again, the flaws of the education system in India are made visible and case of Seventeen-year-old Malvika Raj Joshi is perfect example of this. This Mumbai girl did not attend school like regular kids, but instead was homeschooled, which meant that she did not have any marks card to show for her 10th or 12th. Well, you know how difficult it is to get admissions in a country obsessed with marks?

Recognising Malavika’s exceptional academic record, her mother decided to take her off regular school.

“We are a middle class family. Malvika was doing well in school but somehow I felt that my children (she has younger daughter Radha) need to be happy. Happiness is more important than conventional knowledge,” said Malvika’s mother Supria, explaining her decision to remove her from school.

Although there was little hesitation in the beginning, Supria went on with the decision and it worked. Malvika began to learn more than ever and acquiring knowledge all of a sudden became her passion.

Even though Malvika was brilliant, she found it difficult to get elite Indian institutes like IIT,  because she didn’t have “marks” to show for it. But, here is the irony, she got into the  prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) along with scholarship.

MIT has provision for medal winners in Olympiads (Maths, Physics or Computer science) and Malvika had three of them that she had won in International Olympiad of Informatics.

While being homeschooled, computer science was one of her favourite subjects. Now she will continue to work towards her passion while she pursues her Bachelor of Science degree in one MIT, Boston.

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