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Indian girl beats odds as she enrolls for master鈥檚 degree
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In a country where many girls are still discouraged from going to school, Sushma Verma is having anything but a typical childhood.
The 13-year-old girl from a poor family in north India has enrolled in a master’s degree in microbiology, after her father sold his land to pay for his daughter’s tuition in the hope of catapulting her into India’s growing middle class.
Verma finished high school at seven and earned an undergraduate degree at age 13 — milestones she said were possible only with the sacrifices and encouragement of her uneducated and impoverished parents.
“They allowed me to do what I wanted to do,” Verma said. “I hope that other parents don’t impose their choices on their children.”
Sushma lives a very modest life with her three younger siblings and her parents — eating, sleeping and studying alongside them in a cramped single-room apartment in Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh state.
Their only income is her father’s daily wage of up to 200 rupees (less than US$3.50) for laboring on construction sites. Their most precious possessions include a study table and a second-hand computer.
It is not a great atmosphere for studying, she admitted. “There are a lot of dreams ... All of them cannot be fulfilled.”
But having no television and little else at home has advantages, she said. “There is nothing to do but study.”
Sushma begins her studies next week at Lucknow’s B. R. Ambedkar Central University, though her father is already ferrying her to and from campus each day on his bicycle so she can meet with teachers before classes begin.
She wants to become a doctor, but she cannot take the test to qualify for medical school until she is 18.
“So I opted for the MSc and then I’ll do a PhD,” she said.
Sushma — a skinny, poised girl with shoulder-length hair — is not the first high-achiever in her family. Her older brother graduated from high school at nine, and in 2007 became one of India’s youngest computer science graduates at 14.
In another family, Sushma might not have been able to follow him into higher education. Millions of Indian children are still not enrolled in grade school, and many of them are girls whose parents choose to hold them back in favor of advancing their sons.
“The girl is an inspiration for students from elite backgrounds” who are born with everything, said Dr Bindeshwar Pathak of Sulabh International, who decided to help after seeing a local television program on Sushma.
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