17-year-old ‘unschooled’ Malvika Joshi makes it to MIT

By Kushan Sarkar New Delhi, Aug 30 (PTI) Seventeen-year-old Malvika RajJoshi doesn’t have a class X or XII certificate but has madeit to the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT), thanks to her computer programming talent. Her’s is a story about a mother’s conviction to breakstereotypes and the self belief of her teenage daughter, whoshowed why "merit" has more weightage than "marks". The Mumbai teenager has been provided scholarship by MITas she is pursuing her Bachelor of Science degree aftergetting a seat for being a three-time medal winner (two silverand a bronze) at International Olympiad of Informatics orcommonly known as Programming Olympiad. The MIT has a provision for accepting students who aremedal winners at various Olympiads (Maths, Physics orComputer) and it was Malvika’s medals that ensured that shecan fulfil her aspirations of pursuing research work in herfavourite subject — Computer Science. Malvika recalls those early days during an emailedinteraction from Boston. "When I started unschooling, that was 4 years back, Iexplored many different subjects. Programming was one of them.I found programming interesting and I used to give more timeto it than to other subjects, so, I started liking it at thattime," she says. Malvika found it difficult to get admission in eliteIndian institutes like IIT, which has strict rules as oneneeds to pass class XII exams. In fact only institute where she got admission wasChennai Mathematical Institute (CMI) where she was enrolledinto M.Sc level course as her knowledge was on par with B.Scstandard. "There is absolutely no question that Malvika’s admissionto MIT is based on her superlative achievements at IOI. It isa credit to MIT’s flexibility that they can offer admission toa student who demonstrates excellent intellectual potentialdespite having no formal high school credentials," says CMI’sMadhavan Mukund, who is also National Co-ordinator of IndianComputing Olympiad. However, Madhavan made it clear that Malvika is not aproduct of the system but despite it. "This is possible only for a student whose academicachievements are outstanding, which is the case with Malvika’sperformance at IOI," he has a word of caution. But this young Mumbai girl’s fascinating story startsabout four years ago when her mother Supriya took anunbelievably tough decision. She was in class VII at Dadar Parsee Youth AssemblySchool in Mumbai and doing exceedingly well in academics whenher mother decided to pull her out of school. (MORE) PTI KHSZMNSMN