This Boy From A UP Village Got 100 Percent Scholarship To Stanford University

Manu Chauhan from Uttar Pradesh has received a 100 percent scholarship for his admission to Stanford University. He will pursue a bachelor’s program in International Relations and Economics.

Chauhan hails from Akrabad village, and his father is a small insurance salesman, and so he has been toiling hard to meet the daily needs of the family. With his humble background, the boy faced many difficulties. However, Manu did not lose his zeal and studied with all his might. And that’s how he got admission into a free school.

“I studied in the local government primary school in the village of Akrabad till grade 5. At the end of the year, I appeared for the entrance exam for Vidyagyan School and got selected. That was the year 2014,” Manu said Times Now.

VidyaGyan was established as India’s first rural leadership academy for meritorious and underprivileged students from the state of Uttar Pradesh. It is run by Shiv Nadar Foundation. Each year about 2,50,000 students appear for the entrance which selects only 250 students. Manu was one of the top 250 in 2014.

The bright lad thanked his school for helping him reach here. He also mentioned that his teachers were extremely encouraging at every step of the way.

Manu scored 95.4 percent in his 10^th board examinations and won an outstanding performance award in Assessment of Scholastic Skills through Educational Testing twice. He also became the best speaker in intra-class debate competitions and won a gold medal in Open State Level Table-Tennis championship in the year 2018.

He calls his father his real motivator.

“When back home during vacation, I would often hear my father and family talking about various policies. I was still young, but when I added my opinion, I was appreciated for the thought process. It was then that I knew that policy-making, political science was what I aspired for,” Manu says.

The Vidyagyan Academy is focused on developing future leaders who can act as catalysts of change for their communities, villages, and the nation at large. This influenced Manu in a very subtle way for which he chose International Relations and Economics to work in the United Nations for the children of the world.

“Education can change everything. In India, we can provide infrastructure but the mentality of the people have to change. The teachers in government schools, especially in a village like ours, simply aren’t interested in teaching. I want to change that,” he quotes.

Speaking on his choice – Stanford University, he further said, “It is among the world’s top universities and the research infrastructure is excellent. Indian Universities do not offer the opportunity of research. I want to bring change and that requires the right access which Stanford provides me.”

The application process begins from Class 11 itself. Manu was counseled by the school counselor and even had access to counselors in Delhi who helped him understand the process and fill out his application form. Next, the College Board’s scholarship paid for his SAT exams and he scored 1470 out of 1600.

Yet Manu is quite unhappy for the cancellation of Class 12^th board. He said we was willing to ace it and score above 95% at the least. Although the good thing is there is no real impact in getting admissions abroad as the evaluation is subjective and the class 12 board marks were not that important. It is based on the performance over the years and the overall application. The essay also plays a crucial role.

The blue-eyed boy is thrilled to join Stanford and has already gotten his first dose of the vaccine and is waiting for the second dose. He is due to fly in the first week of September.