Tejashree from a Teach for India School in Pune was selected to be the first recipient of the Akhil Chadha Memorial scholarship for the 2018 - 2020 cohort. Tejashree, undeterred by her humble family background, has always been a dreamer and hard-worker. Though she did exceptionally well in the selections in the prior year, she was not offered a place due to the fixed number of full scholarship offers. She determinedly reapplied this year and owing the Davis match, we were able to offer her a well-deserved full scholarship!

“My first year at MUWCI went by fast but when I look back at it, it actually seems like an eternity because my world has completely changed. In my first month on campus, I remember going to a villager’s home for homestay. Her home is right in front of the MUWCI gate. I would look at the gate from their house and wonder if I had ever imagined that I would end up inside those gates! A year ago, this was not even something I thought would be possible, after the first rejection from UWC. I was studying in a girls’ college in Pune, struggling to fit in. I was at a place where teachers would hardly know the names of any of their students, a place where nobody was allowed to think of anything other than academics, a place where I was not as happy as I was back in school. Now, a year later I am in the exact opposite situation and I still can’t quite believe I made it here!” says Tejashree.