pune a whole new world of opportunities is opening up for archana shinde amit devkar and vishal mhatre archana the daughter of a gardener is confident of getting into a good engineering college amit the son of a canteen worker has bagged a fully funded scholarship at the azim premji university in bengaluru and vishal an osmanabad farmers son is looking for a seat in an engineering college in pune all three joined the rajiv gandhi academy of elearning in sahakarnagar two years ago and studied for the iit exams the academy impressed with 38 students clearing the iit jee advanced examination this year using a unique model of admitting half its students from municipal schools across the city and the rest from families who can afford high fees the school has scripted a success story with it very first batch of standard xii pass outs through a tieup with the pace educational trust archana would ordinarily never have attended special classes for the jee but got to do so without paying any fees two years ago she attended a careercounselling session and appeared for an entrance test for admission to the academy of elearning she now hopes to use her jee main score to apply for one of the better engineering colleges in the city as the son of a corporate executive in a leading automobile manufacturer udayan joshi could have chosen any junior college and joined any of the jee preparation classes instead he chose to enrol in this municipal school it turned out to be a good decision as he managed a rank in the top 100 in the country for students like joshi it was convenient and timesaving to attend classes for his board examinations and jee entrance at the same place besides the infrastructure was good so he didnt mind paying rs 50000 for the course he is among the 38 who are rankholders in the iitjee advanced exam my father is a farmer in osmanabad district and i had come to pune for my education i studied for ten years in a municipal school here before i qualified for admission to this school said vishal mhatre who managed to get a seat in vellore institute of technology his family was apprehensive about sending him so far away from home so he is looking at engineering colleges in pune this was the first batch of students for us and in 2013 when the agreement with the pune municipal corporation had been signed there were some minor delays we are hopeful that in the coming years the results will get better said vikash tiwari head of pace academy in pune devkar was always a bright student but credits the two years he spent at this school for the boost in his communication skills that eventually got him a place in azim premji university where he will pursue a bsc in physics i got a chance to interact with people from different backgrounds and my language skills