Tea seller’s daughter wins scholarship of Rs 3.8 crore to study in top US college

Sudeeksha Bhati, who belongs to a small village in UP’s Bulandshahr district, will head to Babson College, a private business school in Wellesley, Massachusetts, for a four-year undergraduate course.

If you will it and work for it, you may win it. Sudeeksha Bhati knows this now. The daughter of a tea seller, she has landed a full scholarship to one of the top colleges in the US. Sudeeksha will be the first person in her family to travel abroad for higher studies.

But life wasn’t easy for the girl who hails from a small village in Bulandshahr district in Uttar Pradesh; the family used to struggle to make ends meet in her father’s earnings – Rs 72,000 per year.

“I was expelled from a private school when I was nine years old because my father could not pay the fees. I then took admission in the village primary school. This did not go down well with my family and relatives, as it was against the custom in my community to send a girl child to study,” she said in a news report.

However, the student of humanities studied hard, focusing on the end result. Her hard work paid off and she ended up scoring 98 percent in her CBSE examinations.

Sudeeksha has been awarded a full scholarship of $70,428 per semester (roughly Rs 3.83 crore) for a four-year undergraduate programme by Babson College, a private business school in Wellesley, Massachusetts. The B-school focuses on entrepreneurship education, and is often ranked the most prestigious entrepreneurship college in the US.

She is one of the few girls in her village who will have the chance to pursue college.

“I am happy that I could achieve my dream of studying in the United States. The realisation that hard work pays off has further motivated me to be focused and aim higher. I am happy that my achievement is today a source of happiness for my family and my school. I am positive and hopeful that I will continue to work hard and accomplish my dreams and make my family and school proud of me,” said Sudeeksha, according to a report on India Times.

The young girl is also associated with the Voice of Women initiative, an organisation that fights sexual harassment, and helps families send their daughters to school.

Sudeeksha’s success puts the focus on Vidyagyaan Leadership Academy, an organisation established in 2009 by the Shiv Nadar Foundation in Uttar Pradesh. This residential school for rural meritorious, underprivileged children helps take care of the education and other needs of girls like Sudeeksha.

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