Students from poverty to IIT | Fusion - WeRIndia

Remarkable stories come from people who dare to overcome their odds to succeed. At the recent JEE Advanced 2017 exams, five students managed to pull out incredible successes despite having not having come from the most promising backgrounds.

Yet, the successes of these students made them stand out from the 1,700,000 people who appeared for the JEE exam, which was held at over five hundred centers throughout the country. Here are the stories of these children, their origins, and how they became determined to succeed:

·     Vibilisett Mohan Abhyas is the son of two humble samosa vendor owners in Hyderabad and is seventeen years old. His parents, Subba Rao and Naga Suryakala, had been moving from city to city in search of jobs, making their living off of selling samosas at their roadside eatery. He put in ten hours of study every day and got permission from his school and junior college to stay on the campus after study hours were over. Thus, he managed to achieve 64th rank on the JEE entrance exam and first in South India, first in JEE Mains and scored 310 out of 366 marks in the JEE Advanced. He credits his parents and teachers to his success, and expresses his desire to become a scientist in the future.

·     Arbaaz Alam is the son of an egg-seller in the Bihar Sharief district of Bihar. Determined to change the unstable nature of his family’s financial condition, he became one of Anand Kumar’s Super 30 students, which provides underprivileged children with free coaching, food, and lodging. He managed to crack the IIT JEE Advanced 2017 exam, and is placed in one of the 23 IITs.

·     Arpit Prajapat is the son of a humble gardener from Indore, Harenam Prajapat, whom he credits for his success in the exams. Having practiced with consistent studying and having a strong understanding of scientific concepts, he scored an all-India rank (or AIR) of 46 in the JEE Advanced exam and an AIR of 244 in the JEE main exam of 2017.

·     Adarsh Lal is the son of a general merchant, Panna Lal, in Hayatnagar, who only has an income of ₹7,000 per month. Most of this paycheck goes into paying for the education of his two elder sons. Although Adarsh has never lived a day without food, they have no other privileges beside it. He is determined to make his father proud on this exam and aspires to be a chemical engineer.

·     Bhairulal Jat, son of a farmer Gopal Lal Jat, is from Aarjiya in the Bhilwara district of Rajasthan, where his family would sell buffalo milk and cultivate their small tract of land. His mother was a laborer under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (or NREGA) to both get bread and butter for her family and to educate him. He scored an AIR of 1,143 in the Other Backward Caste (or OBC) category and an AIR of 6,750 in the general category of JEE advanced. He wishes to encourage other children from rural villages like him to seek education if he achieves his goal, and is now pursuing a course either in mechanical or computer science at an IIT.

Image Reference: TheBetterIndia