Patna: Continuing with its track record, all the 30 students of the free coaching institute Super-30 on Sunday cracked the prestigious and highly competitive Joint Entrance Exam (Advanced) for admission to India’s premier Indian Institute of Technology (IITs) this year. This is the fourth time that all the students of the Super 30 founded by mathematician Anand Kumar cracked the test.
“We have done it again. All the 30 students of our institute have cracked the test for admission to the prestigious IITs,” said Kumar amid cheering students pushing sweets into his mouth and lifting him atop on their shoulders to celebrate the occasion.
What is significant about this success is that all the successful students happen to be unprivileged children from economically poor backgrounds. So far, 396 students have made it to the IITs in the past 15 years since the free coaching institute came into being in 2002.
Kumar attributes the success story of his organisation to sheer hard work and unshakeable devotion of the students who have to undergo 16-hour daily study routine for a year. He now plans to expand Super 30.
Super 30 is a highly ambitious and innovative education programme running under the banner of the Ramanujan School of Mathematics. It hunts for 30 meritorious talents from among economically backward sections of the society and shapes them to study at IITs.
In the past 15 years since it was founded it has produced hundreds of IITians from extremely poor backgrounds. During the programme, students are provided free coaching, lodging and food.
Super 30 has become a tool to spot and grow budding talents from among the underprivileged, thanks to the sheer hard work of its founder Kumar. Fascinated by mathematics since early childhood, Kumar always dreamt of becoming a mathematician. He started showing sparks of brilliance since early days. His love for mathematics came to the fore in 1992, when he formed a Mathematics Club, ‘Ramanujam School of Mathematics’, while he was still doing his graduation.
His mathematical bent of mind was spotted by renowned teachers, who provided him encouragement. Under the guidance of his mentor and guru, Devi Prasad Verma, then Head, Department of Mathematics, Patna Science College, Anand started a free training programme for mathematics lovers.
As months rolled by, Kumar contributed several problems and papers on Mathematics to various national and international journals, magazines and newspapers.
In 1994, Anand got an opportunity to pursue higher education in Cambridge University, but he could not afford the fee. Having witnessed extreme financial hardship since childhood, he felt the pangs of poverty so much that he decided to do something for the poor students, who invariably fade away without getting right opportunities. This led to the birth of new form of ‘Ramanujam School of Mathematics’.
