new delhi seventeenyearold malvika raj joshi doesnt have a class x or xii certificate but has made it to the prestigious massachusetts institute of technology mit thanks to her computer programming talenthers is a story about a mothers conviction to break stereotypes and the self belief of her teenage daughter who showed why merit has more weightage than marksthe mumbai teenager has been provided scholarship by mit as she is pursuing her bachelor of science degree after getting a seat for being a threetime medal winner two silver and a bronze at international olympiad of informatics or commonly known as programming olympiadthe mit has a provision for accepting students who are medal winners at various olympiads maths physics or computer and it was malvikas medals that ensured that she can fulfil her aspirations of pursuing research work in her favourite subject computer sciencemalvika recalls those early days during an emailed interaction from bostonwhen i started unschooling that was 4 years back i explored many different subjects programming was one of them i found programming interesting and i used to give more time to it than to other subjects so i started liking it at that time she saysmalvika found it difficult to get admission in elite indian institutes like iit which has strict rules as one needs to pass class xii examsthere is absolutely no question that malvikas admission to mit is based on her superlative achievements at ioi it is a credit to mits flexibility that they can offer admission to a student who demonstrates excellent intellectual potential despite having no formal high school credentials says cmis madhavan mukund who is also national coordinator of indian computing olympiadhowever madhavan made it clear that malvika is not a product of the system but despite itthis is possible only for a student whose academic achievements are outstanding which is the case with malvikas performance at ioi he has a word of cautionbut this young mumbai girls fascinating story starts about four years ago when her mother supriya took an unbelievably tough decisionshe 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 we are a middle class family malvika was doing well in school but somehow i felt that my children she has younger daughter radha need to be happy happiness is more important than conventional knowledge supriya told pti explaining her decisioni was working with an ngo that takes care of cancer patients i would see students who are in 8th or 9th standard being affected by cancer it affected me deeply and i decided that my daughters need to be happythe decision no way was an easy onein india people are still not very aware about the term home schooled or unschooled as it is commonly referredit also took sometime to convince malvikas father raj an engineer who runs his own businessmy husband raj wasnt convinced initially as it was