Avanti – Vidya Poshak IIT / JEE training program - Updates
The program: Avanti
Learning Centers, an award-winning social enterprise set up by IIT Bombay
graduates, has partnered with Vidya Poshak to select about 45 bright students
from north Karnataka and provide them free training in Class XI and XII for the
IIT-JEE. The program will be conducted using technology to bring the expert
tutors sessions to Vidya Poshak students as well as peer learning techniques
that enable a class to move forward using multitude of skills of students.
Profile of students:
Every year Vidya Poshak gets more than 1500 applications for scholarship from
10th grade passed students. In these, at least 40 % have scored more
than 90%. These bright kids might aspire to go to premier institutions such as
IIT, NIT, IISc etc. but are unable due to lack of guidance and coaching. Vidya
Poshak wanted to help such bright but economically challenged students to aim
for and get into premier institutions. In the current 2015-17 batch we have a
total of 35 students with 10 girl students.
22 of the students are from homes with annual income below INR
2,00,000/- (INR Two Lakhs) . The others are slightly above that limit but not
much. Nearly half the students have studied in vernacular medium of
instructions till their 10th grade.
Achievements / Journey so far:
It’s been an interesting journey so far for
Vidya Poshak. In order to select the initial set of 39 students, we conducted
tests for approximately 400 students. However, a major lesson we learnt was that
just the ability to score well does not make an IIT aspirant! Several of our early students left within two months
claiming that the additional burden of IIT coaching was difficult to bear.
Quite a few of our students are from
Kannada medium and the instructions in English were hard to follow for them.
Consequently they took time to come up to speed even though they were the
selected few from hundreds of students who had appeared and failed our
assessment test. After six months we are seeing a fantastic transformation in
our students. Two of our students scored highest in the first Major Test for 11th
grade students across Avanti classes in entire India. 4 of our students were in
the 35 students who scored in 150-179 marks range. Today, our batch stands in
the top 25 percentile across entire national level classes of 11th
grade.
The Future: Vidya Poshak is thrilled as is Avanti about
the success so far of our experiment at Dharwad. We are looking forward to
starting a new batch in the academic year 2016-17 that will aim to get into IIT
in mid-2018.
Financials:
Avanti Learning Center has a model where
the cost of educating the students is minimal compared to other institutions
offering training in JEE preparation. However there is a cost involved for the
material that Avanti provides which Vidya Poshak needs to raise from donations.
The students selected for this course are primarily from financially challenged
households and they need to be supported for their college fees. The books
needed for these students for both their college studies and reference books need
to be procured too. In some cases brilliant students from out of Dharwad will
need support for their hostel and mess fees.
The total amount comes to approximately INR
25,00,000/- for a two year program for one batch of 30 students (INR Twenty five lakhs only).
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