Unschooled Dadar girl makes it to Massachusetts Institute of Technology

A 17-year-old girl from Dadar has made it to the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) without a class X or XII certificate. The only thing that helped Malvika Raj Joshi get through MIT was her computer programming talent. With this, Ms Malvika, who joined the MIT 10 days ago, has set an example of how merit has more weightage than marks.

The teenager has been provided scholarship by MIT as she is pursuing her Bachelor of Science degree after getting a seat for being a three-time medal winner (two silver and a bronze) at International Olympiad of Informatics (IOI) or commonly known as Programming Olympiad. The MIT has a provision for accepting students who are medal winners at various Olympiads (Maths, Physics or Computer) and it was Malvika’s medals that ensured that she can fulfill her aspirations of pursuing research work in her favourite subject — Computer Science.

This young girl’s fascinating story began about four years ago when she was in class VII at Dadar Parsee Youth Assembly School in Mumbai and her mother had to pull her out of school. “When I started unschooling, that was four years back, I explored many different subjects. Programming was one of them. I found programming interesting and I used to give more time to it than to other subjects, so, I started liking it at that time,” said Ms Malvika to PTI, recalling those early days during an emailed interaction from Boston.

Speaking to this newspaper, Supriya Joshi, Ms Malvika’s mother and an activist promoting home schooling, said, “Malvika was contacted by the MIT last September and joined it 10 days ago. In 2012, when she was in class VII, I realised that she was not enjoying her studies and took the tough decision to pull her out of school. However, Malvika’s sole focus remained on learning.”

“In India, people are still not very aware about the term “home schooled” or “unschooled” as it is commonly referred. It also took sometime to convince my husband on this. The education in schools is rote-based and does not give the child the option of learning what they like. Hence, after pulling out Malvika and my younger daughter Radha from their schools, I designed an academic curriculum for them. The confidence I had as a mother was that I am capable of imparting knowledge in my daughters,” said Ms Supriya.

Ms Supriya said that though initially not interested, Malvika accepted the MIT offer following a positive response from them.