Students from low-income homes in India lack financial means and mentorship that are needed to clear tough entrance exams. Avanti Fellows, a PanIIT Alumni India (PIAI) project, helps bridge this educational divide by finding the brightest underprivileged students and giving them access to the training and mentorship they need to succeed. Avanti’s mission is to help underprivileged students study at India’s best universities.
Avanti, founded by Krishna Ramkumar (IIT-B, 2008), is registered as a charitable trust. It has chapters in IIT Bombay, Delhi, Madras, Kanpur and Roorkee.
What Avanti Offers
Avanti provides its fellows with the following:
- Free coaching for IIT-JEE and state-entrance examinations for engineering.
- A dedicated student mentor during high school.
- Mentors during the students’ undergraduate education.
- Access to IIT alumni who provide career advice and counseling during the students’ undergraduate education.
- English language training.
- Aid in securing internships and jobs.
Avanti Fellow Search
Each year, student volunteers, alumni and members of Avanti team work together to conduct the Avanti Fellow Search. Avanti Fellows are selected from the following sources:
- Partner NGOs.
- Government schools.
- Partner coaching classes.
- Online applications.
Avanti’s search process begins with interactive career awareness sessions in schools with large low-income student populations. Interested students are then invited to take aptitude tests that Avanti conducts at regular intervals during the search process. Over 3,000 students from over 400 schools across India took Avanti’s selection test in 2011. The aptitude test is followed by a one-on-one interview process. One hundred and fifteen students were selected for the Avanti Fellow Program in 2011.
Training
Avanti’s partnerships with some of India’s best coaching classes allow it to deliver high-quality training to its fellows. The students also benefit from a tutoring, academic monitoring and guidance program designed and implemented by the student teams. Mentors conduct regular doubt-solving sessions, help design study plans, track test scores and set goals for Avanti fellows during the two-year preparatory process.
Mentoring
Preparing for entrance exams like the IIT JEE requires tremendous academic rigor and discipline. Students also need to constantly evaluate where they stand with respect to their peers and set appropriate academic goals in order to succeed. Each Avanti fellow is thus paired with a current undergraduate student, who acts as his/her Avanti mentor.
The mentoring process involves:
- Weekly conversations, extensive academic monitoring and goal setting and counseling.
- Conducting tutoring and doubt-solving sessions to complement the training provided by the coaching institutes.
