Malvika Raj Joshi’s three medals at the Olympiad, two silver, and one bronze, helped her secure an admission at the MIT, which has the provision to admit the winners of various Olympiads. Programming was one of them. She used to give more time for programming than the other subjects.
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A 17-year-old Indian girl who hasn’t passed 10 or 12 standards has made it to the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
The only institute that allowed her to enroll was Chennai Mathematical Institute (CMI) where she got into an MSc level course as her knowledge was on par with BSc standard.
However, Malvika is not a product of the system but despite it, Madhavan cleared.
He added that this is possible only for a student whose academic achievements are outstanding, which is the case with the performance of Malvika at IOI.
Joshi was removed from the classroom, “unschooling” as she refers to it, by mother Supriya who was anxious the girl and sister Radha were not happy in school.
As for why her family pulled her out of school, her mom tells the Indian Express, “Malvika was doing well in school but somehow I felt that my children need to be happy. Happiness is more important than conventional knowledge”, Supriya said explaining her decision.
Her mother said that I was working with an NGO that takes care of cancer patients. I would see students in 8th or 9th standard with cancer. “Suddenly I saw that my daughter was so happy”, her mom says. It took some time to convince Malvika’s father Raj, an engineer- businessman, about home schooling. Knowledge became a passion.
Unschooling, a recent phenomenon is an educational method of homeschooling where the child choses the activities that interest him or her as a means of learning. She left her job at the NGO and prepared a curriculum for her daughters.
Madhavan said that during the past three years she spent extensive periods at CMI to acquire the background in algorithms and mathematics that she needed to excel at Informatics Olympiad. “Her admission to MIT is not only impressive but reaffirms my beliefs in homeschooling”, says Lois Kotian, a homemaker who homeschools three of her children studying in Class 4, 5 and 6 respectively. “It really weighs down the students”.
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Malvika’s journey to MIT was not an easy one, cautioned Supriya. But she showed “merit” has more weightage than “marks”. “What struck me about the MIT admissions was that the institute had based it on the student’s capability rather than just certification”. While a few academicians point out that homeschooling could curtain the social experience that a school environment provides, Janani A, another parent stated it purely depends on the child’s personality and the family environment.
