Joshi is a three-time medal winner at International Olympiad of Informatics.

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). Malvika Raj Joshi from Mumbai is a three-time medal winner at International Olympiad of Informatics.

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.

Joshi who has got a scholarship from MIT is pursuing a Bachelor of Science degree in the institute. A talented programmer, she wants to pursue research work in computer science.

Joshi said that her learning after starting unschooling helped her develop an interest in programming and changed her life.

“When I started unschooling, that was 4 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,” Malvika Raj Joshi told PTI.

As she didn’t have a 10 and 12 standard certificate, she couldn’t have secured an admission in higher education institutes like Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). The only possibility before her was Chennai Mathematical Institute (CMI) where she got admission to an MSc course as knowledge level was on par with BSc standard.

“There is absolutely no question that Malvika’s admission to MIT is based on her superlative achievements at IOI. It is a credit to MIT’s flexibility that they can offer admission to a student who demonstrates excellent intellectual potential despite having no formal high school credentials,” CMI’s Madhavan Mukund told PTI.

Madhavan is also the national coordinator of Indian Computing Olympiad and he prepared Joshi for all the Olympiads.

It was Joshi’s mother Supriya who took the surprise decision to pull her out of the school and introduce her to the world of unschooling when the girl was doing well in her academics in Class 7 at Dadar Parsee Youth Assembly School in Mumbai.

“We are a middle-class family. 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 told PTI.

“I was working with an NGO that takes care of cancer patients. I would see students who are in 8th or 9th standard being affected by cancer. It affected me deeply and I decided that my daughters need to be happy,” she added.

Supriya convinced her husband Raj, quit her NGO job and prepared a curriculum for Malavika. She created a classroom like situation at home that helped her overcome the fears of the risk she had taken.

“Suddenly I saw that my daughter was so happy. She was learning more than ever – from the time she woke up to the time she was off to sleep. Knowledge became a passion,” Supriya recalled.