Mumbai girl opts out of school, enters MIT

Wadala girl Malvika Joshi (17), who dropped out of formal schooling at the age of 12, has secured a place at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), defying the undue weightage given to marks and degrees.

With a talent for computer programming, Malvika never passed 10th or 12th. But she landed an MIT scholarship to pursue a BSc degree by virtue of being a three-time medal winner at the International Olympiad of Informatics.

The MIT has a provision for accepting students who are medal winners at various Olympiads (Maths, Physics or Computer).

She was in class VII at Dadar Parsee Youth Assembly School in Mumbai and doing exceedingly well in academics when her mother decided to pull her out of school. It was stress and a growing sense of unhappiness during her school days that led her mother Supriya to take such an unconventional decision.