Sharma’s amazing academic journey is one to emulate.
AB Wire
NEW DELHI: Ayush Sharma, 17, of Kalyanpur, India, has been accepted into one of the foremost technical institutions on the planet, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Furthermore, the young man from Kanpur was granted a full tuition waiver, meaning he would effectively be attending the school for free.
The son of a mechanic in the state public works department and a retired employee of the central reserve police force, Sharma will be the first of his family to enroll in a “proper” college, he told HuffPost India.
“None of my parents have been to a full degree college,” he said. “My father has a diploma after which he started his job as a mechanic.”
The path to MIT was not easy for Sharma. He came from a family of limited means and one of his greatest obstacles was the English language. Though his written English was decent, he had difficulty speaking and communicating. He also had no idea how U.S. applications worked.
He eventually heard of Avanti, an organization that provides low-income high school students with focused science and mathematics education via peer learning.
“The method of teaching appealed to me,” said Sharma.
With the help of Avanti’s foreign applications program leader, Taylor Gregoire-Wright, he applied for Yale’s Global Scholars Program, a short summer course, at the end of class 11. Wright, a Yale graduate himself, was not so certain the application would pan out.
“When I first assessed Ayush for our study abroad program, I was not sure he would be able to cope. His communication skills needed work and there was little precedent of middle-class Indian students qualifying for top US schools,†he told HuffPost India.
Not only did Ayush qualify for the program, he received full tuition waiver from the Ivy League institution as well. Still needing to fund his travel, he then turned to crowd-funding and raised the entire amount — $1,500 — in just six hours.
“Ayush returned from Yale completely transformed. He was more articulate, had a broader world view and was convinced that he wanted to go to MIT or another top US university for his undergraduate studies,†recalled Varun Varma, a University of Michigan alumnus and Avanti’s head of sales.
With one eye on the future, Ayush now plans on broadly pursuing his interest in physics, but he said he wants to explore other options as well.
“The best things that happen to me are the ones I least expect,” he said. “I want to explore as much as I can before picking a major.”
Ayush said he eventually intends to work on the educational systems of developing countries.
“The level of science education in India is just not good enough,” he said. “Many students don’t really get to appreciate what science means.”