Rethinking the Education System, My New Project and Plan of Action (On hold)

Entirely skippable. In fact, I myself request you to save your precious time and spend it more productively or on more interesting stuff, but of course you could read it entertainment purposes or if you're interested in the state of education system of India. It does contain a clear description of a problem that needs to be addressed urgently, and those would be the parts that I'd want everyone to read, but the description of the problem is spread in between my ideas related to a solution that I have no w realized it infeasible and impractical; would need to be substantially modified at best, scrapped for a better solution at worst.

I am busy with other projects and academic commitments at the moment, so I won't be able to devote much time to this problem, so I'm just going to leave it here for when I get the time or my brain is able to come up with another better solution, in which case it'll be a separate post instead of an update, but this post shall remain here as it's one of my first posts and there are some interesting problems and thinking tools in here, if I remember correctly the general points I'd written the post around.

Note: This plan is the first draft of a project plan that has undergone several modifications since it was first conceived, and I'm not deleting this just in case you wish to learn about the problems I wish to solve and why it's important to solve them, or are working on something similar, in which case contact me.

In one of my other blogposts, I said that the education system does a pretty good job of sapping out all the curiosity and drive out of students. I'll try to elaborate on that and also talk about some of my recent personal experiences that led to me having such an opinion about the education system.

I was interested in getting involved in research in my areas of interest, so I talked to people in my family and immediate environment, and I was discouraged from starting research so early, and told to just study what I'm being taught and do all this stuff after graduation.

It's these outdated ideas of what is and isn't possible and pre-conceived notions about what a student is supposed to do that are so dangerous for students who don't thrive in the traditional educational settings, this one-size-fits-all environment. Each child with all their individual differences in motivation, interests and abilities expected to do the exact same stuff and fit the mold of what society expects them to be.

I noticed that schools are good at killing the motivation of the few students who manage have it in such an environment in the first place, but I was thinking more along the lines of how we could teach such that every student feels the sense of satisfaction and genuine curiosity to learn more and try to understand the fundamental processes governing the universe, as well as have a significant positive impact on society through their projects.

I don't get to see that around me, but I believe that if education is done right, it could achieve this seemingly ambitious goal, and much more, because any subject taught in the right way along with it's why and how can be made interesting for anyone, and there is a lot of hidden potential that could be enabled to flourish only if they're provided with the adequate opportunities and resources, and later go on to make major contributions to science, arts and society. I have a few more ideas about how this process could be speeded up with interventions inspired from psychology and other related disciplines, but I won't deviate from the topic and keep that for a later time.

I have a few ideas about how a curriculum could be designed in a way that actually teaches students how to think, and also how to learn and why, with habits that would help them for life and help them discover their true values, abilities, interests and come up with their own guiding principles that would enable them to grow into educated, socially-conscious and responsible adults.

A system that is not focused on memorizing and rote-learning (something that is encouraged in the Indian education system which teaches with the aim of preparing students to regurgitate information to get a passing grade) in today's golden age of information, and trying to develop skills and ways of thinking that would actually help you in your life and academic pursuits and also be more relevant when you join the workforce.

It was very possible that after receiving all the discouragement, I could have trusted my family and the people around me who are my elders, but I am not the type to heed to anyone's advice so easily and without questioning it. So I reached out to people from all over the world, including professors and graduate students from universities like IITs, IISc, LSE, Caltech, Amherst etc. and received some really helpful advice that was completely opposite of what I was being suggested here.

They told me that I have a strong theoretical foundation in the subjects I'm interested in, considering that I'm just in my first year, and that I should try to get involved in hands-on research as soon as possible. I'm still trying to find such opportunities, but I realized that had I not reached out to them, I would have had to stifle my strong interest in all the topics I wished to investigate and the problems I wanted to start working on as early as possible.

I also realized that even there might be other students like me in other universities with similar levels of motivation who are unaware of such opportunities who heed the advice of the people around them and kill their desires to fit in the environment that's not conducive to their needs.

I'd like to mention that I'm not one to just complain about something without suggesting a solution. I believe that there is a problem for every solution, but some are harder to solve than others, and so it's not worth the time and efforts they require, or I'm just not motivated enough to solve them because I don't consider them worth the opportunity cost of spending my on a more productive activity. You just move on and prioritize to focus on what you can and want to do.

But this one is a problem I'm interested in solving, because I think there is a lot of unrealized potential in kids who aren't provided with the opportunities they should have, and so I'm now going to describe a project I am planning to set in motion very soon.

It's main objective would be to spread awareness about opportunities available to children, especially underprivileged children, as well as college students, build a community of motivated students who aspire to be researchers or are passionate about having an impact on society through entrepreneurship, and provide them with access to a network of research mentors to help them explore their areas of interest more deeply and get involved in research, all for free.

As the project grows, some source of income would be required to support it's operations, and to come up with the plan I'm about to describe I took inspiration from a connection that my brain formed between two things I'd read quite some time ago- 1) a one year old news article that resurfaced to my memory while thinking of the possible ways through which I could keep it free and accessible but at the same time generate profits to sustain the operations, and 2) a university I don't remember the name of with a fee model that allows it's students to pay back their fees only if they successfully land a job after graduation, after which they are required to pay a certain percentage of their total salary to the university.

The article that came to my mind was about how a rural leadership academy introduced an impoverished farmers son to opportunities available to him abroad and helped him bag an admit with a full-ride scholarship to Cornell university. So I thought that for instance if I could introduce 500 underprivileged students to such opportunities and for no cost assist them with all the components that go into applying to any university abroad that would provide them with generous aid, on the condition that they pay a certain percentage of any job they land in the next 4-5 years as tuition for the help, and out of the 500 high-school students, say, 5 of them manage to get into their dream university, preferably a top 25, and land a job in the next five years, then the payment they would make to the organization would be far more than the cost of the operations, due to the simple fact that the salary they would earn from any job they get as graduates from the top 25 universities would be more than enough to cover the costs of assisting all the 500 students, as the of value of the dollar is much more than the INR.

This is also a model adopted by many venture capital firms; they invest in a lot of companies, and only a small fraction of them survive after a certain period of time and an even smaller fraction manage to achieve the status of unicorns, but the profits they generate from the unicorns is far greater than the initial amount they had invested in all the companies, including the ones that failed. They spread their risk, and the few successful ones do rest of the job.

There would be a second category of students who are undergraduates and require research mentorship or assistance with applying for further studies abroad. This category is equally important because I have noticed that the opportunities available to undergraduate in many universities except a few research-oriented universities are not adequate. As I mentioned elsewhere, the Indian education system determines who gets what college solely based on their grades, so it's not hard to conceive of a situation where external circumstances out of a student's control could have negatively influenced their scores on the entrance exam, and due to no other criteria through which they could demonstrate their ability or interest, they were sorted into a program or university that didn't have the sort of programs or facilities they wished for.

The second group of students could also take advantage of the extensive mentorship network and community of aspiring researchers and entrepreneurs, and if they successfully get a job after graduating into the university abroad (that we assist them in applying to), they pay a certain percentage of their salary per year as fee for the assistance or research mentorship, or both.

It won't generate instant returns, but I won't require any. When I start out, I won't require many resources or need any source of income for the operations. Once the organization starts growing the I notice that it won't be able to continue without some sort of funding, I could reach out to angel investors, incubators and participate in entrepreneurship competitions to generate seed funding and carry on the operations till the first round of payments starts flowing in.

The research mentors could be professional researchers, graduate students or even undergraduate students who have worked on research projects in the past and are willing to volunteer for no payment (at least for the first few years) to assist underprivileged students with getting access to opportunities that they were fortunate enough to have themselves, and help them with developing their own original research projects.

For helping highly motivated and promising but underprivileged high-school students apply to universities abroad, we could provide them with a team consisting of international students studying at any such university who have successfully been through the process and are willing to volunteer to help provide underprivileged students with access to the opportunities they were fortunate enough to be provided with, with no expectation of payment for the next few years.

Also if anyone thinks I'm promoting brain drain with such a project, you have to consider the fact that the type of students who would be assisted to apply abroad would also be the type of students who would be very dissatisfied with the current education system, which won't be able to satisfy all their needs and provide them with an environment that would allow them to flourish, and they would have went on to pursue higher studies abroad anyway.

In doing this I'm actually encouraging them to think of someday giving back to their community and pay forward the help that they were provided by contributing to the society and help other underprivileged students, in the same way as the students who are currently studying in their dream universities would have mentored them. Moreover, it would help address the problem with the education system and fulfil the current needs of exceptional students, and bring the issue to the forefront by speeding up the process of reform that's already been put in place by the National Education Policy 2022. The problem is, the NEP 2022 still hasn't been implemented by most of the universities, and it's not perfect, so it'll take at least 5-10 years to notice any significant change, but I don't think that the type of students I have in mind have that much time or patience.

That covers the research mentorship and assistance in pursuing undergraduate education abroad part. I'd like to elaborate on a point I touched upon earlier when I said that underprivileged students would be allowed to explore their topics of interest in a way that the current schooling system fails to provide. This is a separate program from the research mentorship program, and it involves coming up with a curriculum that teaches students in a way that ignites a genuine sense of wonder and curiosity about understanding the universe, teachers them a subject in a way that aims to develop an intuitive understanding of the concepts so they are capable of applying it to real-world situations and see how they could apply it to different disciplines and novel situations; the philosophy of the subject, including why and how it was developed, and why it's still relevant in the present time.

I also wish to teach them life skills like critical thinking, rationality, empathy, personal finance and emotional intelligence to mention a few, that are not taught in schools, including the important skill of learning how to learn, and explore questions like what they want from life and how they can discover their true interests, abilities and values to grow into educated, socially conscious and responsible adults who could have an impact on society and make a world a better place to live in. Not just that, but educating them about new technologies like AI and Genetic Engineering and allow them to paly with research kits developed specially for kids, as well as discuss about the possible future scenarios and their philosophical implications. They would also be given the option to train in techniques like journaling, meditation and lucid dreaming that would allow them to expand their horizons that enable their physical and mental development.

The last but not least way in which the project would help the students would be the community, which would be a great opportunity for them to connect and exchange ideas with like-minded people with similar interests or aspirations. For the reasons mentioned above, the program would have to be selective, but to ensure that it's as inclusive as possible and no one is left out, I plan to give out all the resources such as the opportunities, research material and curriculum courses for free so that anyone who doesn't make it into the program could use the resources for self-directed education as per their convenience. The students who are selected would also get access to the community, personal support, research mentorship, exclusive events with professionals from various fields, as well as personalized help with applying to colleges abroad, if they wish.

I'd like to know if you have any comments or if you're interested in collaborating, or if you're just interested in knowing about the finer details of it that I haven't included in this post.

Update: I have made some significant improvements and modifications to the plan since I released this post, so now it's less vague and I've also incorporated a few novel ideas into it. Check out my post "Updated Plan.." for details.

update 2: the plan has undergone several modifications and is now more specific and overall better than the first draft that I included in this blog post. It's solving the same problem but for free without any expectation to pay and several other novel ideas incorporated into it. Message me if you're interested.

Part 2:

I earlier described my experience with the research environment in India and it’s contrast with the environment in the USA. There was another one describing a possible solution to this problem, and I realized that it’s too vague and there are already organizations working on it, so I narrowed down my problem statement and made some significant improvements to the plan, incorporating some novel ideas into the plan that I’m going to describe now.

This new project of mine is an unaddressed but glaring issue with the education system, and so it also doesn’t have any organization working to solve it as far as I’m aware. I’d appreciate any feedback on this and I’m also open to the possibility of collaboration. If you are interested in learning about my motive and personal experiences behind it, just ask me for the link to my blogpost on the topic.

I realized that there would be many students in schools and universities all over India and other such countries who would be discouraged from getting involved in research and would have to stifle their strong interest and motivation to investigate any topic they’re interested in or solve any problem they have an innovative solution to. It’s not just for research, it’s pretty much the same situation for student with an entrepreneurial mindset too, but I’m just going to address the issue with the research environment for now.

My first idea is to build a network of researchers- professors, graduate students and undergraduates who have experience in research- who share my opinion about the education system and desire to bring about a reform in it, as well as volunteer their expertise to mentor driven young students who don’t have access to the same level of opportunities as students in other countries where the research environment is more developed. This is especially true students from underprivileged communities.

My plan isn’t just to make them mentor the students for no fee, though that would be the case initially, it could be a highly profitable plan, as I will describe later in this post, that could support our operations and enable us to reach to students from a wider range of communities and expand to other locations in the future. The other point that I’ll also just now explain is that the focus would only be on topics revolving around the biosciences and the life sciences.

As a part of this project, I also wish to form a community of like-minded individuals who can discuss and exchange ideas and form collaborations to develop original projects. I thinking of something like a reading and journal club, where every month we decide to read some part of a textbook related to the life sciences, or read a research paper, and later discuss the main ideas, share comments and exchange notes on our main takeaways as well as develop a deep understanding of the methods involved, the topics discussed in the book or paper, so that we are able to ably the same concepts in novel situations to similar problems.

We could also share any interesting news article or piece from reliable and reputed scientific magazines or journals to stay up-to-date with the cutting-edge of fields such as genetic engineering, biotechnology, neurotechnology, astrobiology, synthetic biology and pharmacology, and discuss the relevance and implications of any new developments on the society, as well as how it could be connected to other similar fields to encourage innovation.

Another idea is holding regular debate sessions on topics such as the philosophy of science, neuro-philosophy, neurolaw, evolution, bioethics, origin of life, transhumanism, abortion, natalism, euthanasia, longevity, biohacking, eugenics, biohazards and public health policy, to allow them to dig deeper these topics and develop a big picture view of why we are studying what we are studying and stay updated with topics relevant to contemporary society and the future of humanity. It would also help them develop their critical thinking and persuasion skills, which would help them be better physicians and doctors and empathize more deeply with their patients and people they’re trying to help in the future.

We could also invite some professional researchers and doctors from time to time if we are interested in learning more about their research interests or if they’re interested in addressing motivated students who have the potential to be future leaders and pioneers in their selected profession related to the life-sciences and work towards creating a better society. There are also some international events and conferences that we could attend and competitions we could participate in as a team.

I also wish to develop a curriculum that respects individual differences in abilities and interests, and organizes high school drives to encourage students to dig deeper into such topics that are not even mentioned in the current traditional outdated high school curriculum, and ignite in them a genuine sense of wonder and joy for the process of scientific discovery, the beauty of the scientific method and it’s relevance to their life sand society, as well as a strong curiosity to investigate these real-world phenomena more deeply and a desire to understand the fundamental principles governing the universe.

One problem with the curriculum that I touched upon in my previous post describing my motivation behind this project is that there isn’t much interdisciplinarity. To briefly recap, the interdisciplinary approach takes place at a later level once you establish a strong foundation in one discipline and demonstrate your expertise in it. You can not realistically expect to learn everything very early, because your limited time and cognitive restraints won’t enable you to do that, unless you are an immortal child prodigy, which is very unlikely, and even then you’d struggle to achieve that.

The point is, you do what interests you, and then you develop your skills and expertise in that topic, and later on you investigate your research interests using tools and techniques from various disciplines and in collaboration with professionals from diverse backgrounds.

The current Indian education system doesn’t provide that much flexibility, and moreover they add some unnecessary courses to our primary field of study without helping us understand how they could be applied to solve problems in the discipline we’re interested in, and it just becomes a burden. It’d be better if we could learn to use the topics they teach separately as a part of a project that we work on once we have some level of understanding of our primary discipline.

Now I get to the second part of the plan. I am from a non-medical background, which means that I didn’t have biology as a subject in high-school. In case you are not aware of the system, Indian students are forced to choose a stream in eleventh grade that determines what career they would pursue later on and severely restricts their career choices available to them after school.

So, a student who didn’t study biology can’t study any of the biosciences at the undergraduate level, a student who didn’t have mathematics can’t study engineering, and a student with business or humanities can’t choose either of those options. You might see the problem with it- interests change wildly during the school years, and it’s a time when a student should be allowed to explore and discover their true interests and abilities rather than be forced to choose one stream and specialize in it.

So, as I was saying, I am from a non-medical background, and I soon realized that my true interests and abilities lie some fields related to the life sciences. Though I still am very interested in mathematics and computer science, after talking to some professionals and doing some research, I concluded that It’d be a better decision for me to have a background in the life sciences considering my future goals and research interests, because academic credentials are more valued in that field (I problem I’m going to address later in this post) and most of the programming stuff is easier to pick up online.

I go into more depth into why I think so and how I tested this claim with empirical evidence in some of my previous blog posts which I could share with you if you wish. The point is, I realized that this is a field that is truly aligned with my interests and future aspirations.

With that settled, I decided that I would try to switch to such a program in the next academic session that’s going to start next year, and due to the National Education Policy that’s been implemented at my university starting this year, I’m lucky to receive a certificate at the end, so my year and fees won’t be wasted.

I soon discovered that none of the reputed universities allow students form a non-medial background to appear for entrance exams to their programs related to the life sciences. There are some private universities, but they’re too expensive. My only option seemed to be to take a chance at applying for Fall 2023 transfer at universities abroad that provide very generous aid and full-ride scholarships to international transfer students (yes, such universities exist.)

I also realized that there would be many other students like me in the same situation as me. The would be high school students who would be too late into their chosen stream to change their stream from non-medical to medical, and there would be engineering students who wish to study medicine or the life sciences but have already spent an year or two in their current universities.

It’d be a bad option for either of them to drop out from their university and waste another year open schooling to attempt one of the most competitive exams in India with very few spots available to students, and it’s not even completely based on merit, but I don’t wish to digress into the topic of reservation here. They could go to private medical universities, but they are very expensive and it’s not uncommon for them to have a fee of around one crore rupees.

Two non-medical students appealed to the Supreme court to allow them to sit for the NEET exam because even though they didn’t have biology as a subject, they have all the knowledge required, but the supreme court still hasn’t delivered a verdict and it’d be a huge risk for anyone to test their luck and take any chances on such a matter. More on the disadvantages of the Indian medical entrance exam NEET later in this post.

NEET, and JEE for that matter, sort you into a program and university based on a number you obtained from a test given on one day, whatever that external circumstances affecting you may be. Some students are not able to perform well due to several factors out of their control, and I believe that the admissions process should follow a more holistic criteria to admit students, including components such as an essay to demonstrate their true interests and future goals, as well as an opportunity to describe their extracurricular activities that have been accumulated over a longer period of them. There are more details I have in mind for how students could be selected and how the curriculum could be improved, but that’s irrelevant to our present discussion.

You’d notice that all the problems described above apply to students from other academic backgrounds as well, but my focus for this project is going to be students from a non-medical background and students from a medical background who weren’t able to get into medical school for several plausible reasons.

Another source of inspiration for me was the event of Indian medical students studying in Ukraine and Belarus returning to India after Russia invaded Ukraine, and the subsequent debate of whether or not to allow them to continue their medical education in India. They were not, and the rigid system failed to accommodate them for this unexpected event and leaved them anxious about their uncertain future and aspirations to be a doctor and contribute to society, just like many other students who aren’t able to fulfil their wish to be a doctor in this country due to the ridiculous restrictions imposed on them by the outdated education system.

Now I’ll like to talk a little about the education system in the USA before going ahead. In the USA, it doesn’t matter what you have studied in school, you can still major in whichever subject you wish at the undergraduate level. In university, you are not required to commit to a major right way; you are allowed to explore different courses and see what captures your interest, and even after you commit, you have the flexibility to switch majors, add a minor, double major, combine different majors or at some places even design your own curriculum.

Unlike in India, medical school in the USA is a graduate degree, and it doesn’t require you to major in any particular subject. You are only required to fulfil a certain set of criteria- courses that ensure that you have covered the necessary pre-requisites required to study at med school, and extracurriculars such as research, shadowing and volunteering. The benefit of such a system is that you can study whatever interests you and major in say art history or Asian studies and still become a doctor.

My plan goes as follows- for high school students who have realized that they wish to study medicine or any of the life sciences at the undergraduate but for whom it’s too late to change streams, we provide them with the research opportunities and profile building events and courses related to medicine and the life sciences so they’re able to take a gap year and apply to any university abroad

There’s a misconception that universities abroad are expensive. Yes, indeed that is true in most cases. But very few are aware of universities in the USA that provide generous financial aid to international freshmen and transfer students and promise to meet the 100% demonstrated need of all admitted international students. There are also a few in Singapore. Some of them don’t even require you to pay back your scholarships and cover your financial needs with aids and grants, and some are even need blind. Some are well-known names, some less so.

These students could take a gap year and build their research profile to apply for BS or BS/MD programs in the next year’s academic cycle. Either that, or the students could continue with their undergraduate studies in India itself, and that brings me to the second group of students I plan to target- undergraduates pursuing their studies in a non-medical or non-biosciences field who aspire to be doctors or researchers in the life sciences and for any reason cannot or do not want to change their field of study at the undergraduate level.

For them, this is the plan- with the research mentorship network I described earlier in this post, we could develop a series of recorded lectures related to all the pre-requisite courses that are necessary to appear for MCAT, the medical entrance examination in the USA. They could prepare for the MCAT alongside their academic commitments, and for the extracurriculars I plan to collaborate with NGOs all over the country. The mentors would also help them develop their own research projects, and prepare them for medical school in the USA.

We could also hold one-on-one doubt sessions for the students who require it, and to ensure that it’s not a huge burden on the academic commitments of the research mentor and doesn’t take up too much of their valuable time, I plan to ask them to focus on at most two courses relevant to their research interests and areas of specialization, as well as assign them just one or two students. For this reason, I’m going to need the help of many researchers, or initially a few researchers willing to make a significant commitment to the project. I’ll describe what there is in it for them later.

An important part of this project is that all of this is going to be absolutely free for all students. Even though I don’t wish anyone’s background, academic or financial, be a barrier to enter this program, I intend to keep the program selective, and only take in the students who demonstrate a genuine interest in the topics they are going to study, desire to be physicians and scientists and have a well-formed plan of what they wish to achieve in life and why. All this would be measure through some sort of evaluation at the time of admissions.

Once the students are prepared for the MCAT, they would have several options available other than just an MD. The MCAT is accepted all over the States, Australia, Caribbean as well as Canada. If they are really exceptional, they could get into one of the highly coveted yet not well-known (in India) MD-PhD Medical Scientist Training Programs (MSTP) in the States, which are full-funded programs that provide you with both an MD and a PhD in the same program, and which are highly competitive.

There are a few universities known to accept international students, and they are highly sought-after programs because an MD is usually expensive, while an MSTP is full-funded, and provides you with rigorous training in human medicine and your filed of specialization for the PhD, and consists of very bright and driven aspiring physician-scientists with great ambitions to have a positive impact on the lives of people in the future.

Another option is going for a MD after a PhD; some universities have an accelerated PhD to MD program, and students could also enter the medical field through Nursing in Canada, which is also a graduate degree and in huge demand nowadays. But those are last resorts for someone who aspires to be a doctor and not just a nurse or just a researcher.

Now about the payment plan. I earlier mentioned that it’s going to be free, all of it. So how am I going to pay the research mentors and fund the operations once they grow? Well, I’m going to use the following payment plan: Once a student graduates from med school and successfully becomes a medical doctor, the student would be required to pay a certain percentage of their annual income as fees for a certain amount of time period for the help that we provided them with a few years back.

So even if 5 students out of 5000 students make it to a med school in the USA, their income after graduating would be high enough to more than cover all the initial investment that went into training all the 5000 students, and leave a large profit margin at the end. This is the case because in the USA, an average physician earns close to $300K, and an average surgeon earns close to $600K, but their earning potential is very high and it goes as high as $1 Million. For reference, 100K USD = ~ INR 82 lakh INR.

This is a model similar to what some Venture Capitalists use when investing in startups. They provide seed funding to a large amount of startups, and most of them fail and go bankrupt, but even if one or two of them succeed and make it to the status of a unicorn, they generate large amounts of profit even after all the money that went into funding all the failed startups.

This is a long-term plan, and so if it seems that the project requires funding before the first batch graduates from med school, we could use a pay-what-you-can model for current students, and start online courses and research mentorship programs for hobbyists who wish to learn more about the biosciences but don’t aspire to have a career in that field.

We could also accept crowdfunding and donations, and reach out to incubators and angel investors to ask for seed funding. We could participate in social entrepreneurship and startup competitions that have funding opportunities for winners, such as GSEA and MIT-SOLVE. There are quite a few events and competitions like that.

For this plan to work, I need to do two things to check if this is a viable solution to the problem and sustainable business model-

1) I need to conduct some market research surveys to determine whether or not there is a market for such students and if they’d be willing to use such a service.

2) I also need to reach out to professors and ask them if they’d be willing to record such courses and help such students with research mentorship, and see if there are enough mentors to run this project.

3) I need to talk to some MCAT people and MDs in the USA to ask if students who prepare with such courses in this way would be eligible to appear for the MCAT, as well as Indian-origin doctors and people schooled in India currently pursuing a medical degree in the States if my project plan is viable and realistic.

To summarize, the project aims to provide motivated high school and undergraduate students interested in the life sciences with inadequate support access to research mentorship, as well as help students from a non-medical background achieve their dreams of being a medical doctor or researcher.

If successful, this could be a chance for the med school in the USA to have a more diverse student body of previously under-represented minorities who were driven and bright but didn’t have access to the same level of opportunities as their more well-off peers. It would also be the case that such students would be more brilliant than their competitors because they would have faced significantly harder hurdles to achieve the feat and competed with students with access to much more support and opportunities than them, and succeeded despite all the odds being against them. Moreover there's the fact that they did all these studies in addition to their non-medical academic commitments, they refused to settle with their current situation, and as a result they have an interdisciplinary skillset that's going to be useful to them in the future. If despite all these hurdles they manage to clear the MCAT, I see no reason anyone could have to deny them their well-earned seat.

It’d also force the people associated with the education system in India to consider the possibility of a radical change or reform in the system, as this would show them that these students really are capable of cracking entrance exams in the USA, which are much more competitive and holistic and overall a better evaluation criteria than NEET, and how it’s causing a huge brain-drain just because the system was previously unable to accommodate their wishes and aspirations, which is going to continue indefinitely unless some immediate steps are taken to address this problem.

I won’t confine myself to just India, I’m also willing to seek help from researchers in other countries, and reach out to underprivileged students from second and third world countries who may not have access to research opportunities and adequate support required for them to flourish. It’d be disastrous for our society if such motivated kids aren’t given the necessary support and allowed to contribute to society.

There’s another overarching goal of making a statement and proving that age is no bar for a person’s ability to research in the life sciences, medicine, or really any topic. I know two bright and driven individuals, both who faced resistance from the Indian society because of their academic background, credentials or age, and went on to start successful projects later despite all the backlash.

Some very young motivated people have very clear plans for their future and they’re more aware about their interests than older people who still don’t have any clear direction or worthy ambition, and that’s perfectly fine, but both the categories shouldn’t be grouped together under a one-size-fits-all system that disregards the individual differences in their interests and abilities, and forced to attend the same classes and taught in the exact same way, with no focus on their individual personality and goals. Age shouldn’t be a barrier for anything, and nor should academic credentials hold any capable person back.

This is also the reason why I am focusing on medicine and not technology. In tech, credentials and background don't matter as much, even in India; people from med background can learn all relevant skills and courses online for free and still get selected over someone from a tech background because employers in this field care less about your credentials and academic background and more about your skills.

This is not the case in medicine and the life sciences, and students who discover that their true interests lie in that domain may find themselves stuck and constrained to a field they don't feel passionate about for the rest of their career if they're not made aware of the opportunities, just because of the outdated system and a decision they made when they were in 10th grade and still susceptible to the influence of their parents, society and peer group with not much idea about their own interests and ambitions.

The tech industry is moving towards such a model, where there is a trend of employers not giving any weight to an applicant’s academic credentials while evaluating their ability and deciding their suitability for a job. In the life sciences, it’s harder because there is a large theory component and in many cases, it requires hands-on web lab experience, but the traditional educational institutions are slowly failing to meet the few needs that differentiate them from newer models of education, and they either need a radical reform or go redundant in this golden age of information when so much knowledge is available and as accessible as ever, with support from online forums and the ease of reaching out to professionals from every single field.

If a person has the sufficient level of motivation and drive, they can learn more than any institution can teach them on its own, and they can get all the support they require if they try to find it. It’s a dream come true for autodidacts, polymaths and philomaths. The only thing required is sufficient motivation, support and a community of like-minded individuals, and after that only the sky is the limit.

The opportunity cost of forcing someone to do something they’re not interested is a waste of their most valuable resource- time, and the opportunity cost of not working on something that is aligned with their interests, abilities and aspirations is too high to neglect any longer. There could be a lot of potential getting wasted or suppressed by the demands of the rigid curriculum and system, but that shouldn’t stop talented students from realizing their potentials and achieving their ambitions.

This plan would also be useful for high-school medical stream students who couldn't clear the Indian medical entrance exam which only tests a student's ability to memorize information, and gives them a number that determines their career options, with no focus on their motivation and passion for the subject, future aspirations and goals, or extracurriculars that might be accumulated over a longer period of time. These exams are also very competitive and there are very few spots in government universities, and the alternative private universities are too expensive for the majority.

These students could be prepared to apply for a BS or BS/MD in the USA and in this way the outdated traditional education system won't be a barrier for them to pursue their passion and it would also provide the American medical community with bright students with a lot of potential who could make great contributions in their career after passing through all these hurdles. If not the USA, such students also have inexpensive options in Canada and Italy, and they could benefit from the research mentorship to explore topics, discover their interests and build their profile.

I also want to send a message that age and credentials shouldn't be a barrier for motivated students with the required knowledge in any discipline, and that is increasingly the case with tech where employers don't care about credentials and academic background but only skills, and I wish to bring about a similar reform in the medical and biosciences fields.

I have personally faced these issues and wish to help others who might be in a similar situation as myself so that they are aware of all the opportunities and possibilities and don't have to stifle their dreams and ambitions.

Please let me know what you think about this project plan. I’d greatly appreciate any feedback or comments you wish to share, and I’m also open to the possibility of collaboration if you wish to join my project or know anyone who might be interested. Thank you.

update: the plan has undergone several modifications and is now more specific and overall better than the first draft that I included in this blog post. It's solving the same problem but for free without any expectation to pay and several other novel ideas incorporated into it. Message me if you're interested.