A bunch of 27 students from the four-year undergraduate BS (bachelor of science) program of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) created history of sorts by becoming the first ever batch to formally graduate from the century-old institute.
Some of the students have secured seats in renowned foreign institutions where they will pursue further studies.
The BS programme thrusts on research and is interdisciplinary in nature covering a wide spectrum of subjects ranging from pure sciences such as physics, chemistry, biology to those such as materials science, engineering and even humanities.
An excited Indrashis Datta, who specialised in biology, just returned from an internship stint at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland said, “I came back just to attend the convocation and I will be leaving tonight.”
Indrashis will be pursuing a Masters degree at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.
His classmate, Himan Galagali will be heading to the renowned John’s Hopkins University, USA, on a full scholarship. She wishes to pursue research in molecular biology “My time here was quite good. There was a good peer group, good instructors,” she said.
Many from the undergraduate batch had given up seats in prestigious engineering and medical colleges in favour of research at IISc.
Pranav Garg, who specialised in Physics, got a very good rank of 569 in the IIT-JEE exams and could have easily got seat in any of the prestigious IITs. He will now be heading to University of British Colombia, Canada.
Another student, Sriram S, had a chance to go to NIT, Surathkal and Mysore Medical College, however, he choose to pursue life sciences at IISc. Similarly, Indrashis and Himani had forfeited their seats at Benaras Hindu University and Bangalore Medical College respectively.