October 25 2017, Uttar Pradesh: The Shiv Nadar Foundation announced that the preliminary written examination for the 2018 academic session at VidyaGyan Leadership Academy will be conducted on 10th December, 2017.

VidyaGyan is afree residential school for meritorious, underprivileged students from rural Uttar Pradesh.VidyaGyan students usually come from families of farmers, daily wage earners, among others in rural Uttar Pradesh with an annual family income of less than Rs. 1 lac. Every year, VidyaGyan handpicks approximately 200 meritorious students from a pool of 250,000 children who apply from across 75 districts of Uttar Pradesh (UP) and nurtures them till class XII with world-class education.

VidyaGyan was first set up in Bulandshahr in 2009 and this year, the second batch of its students graduated (Grade XII) from the school. 2017 marked a milestone for VidyaGyan’s Sitapur campus (established two years after the Bulandshahr campus), as its first batch graduated out of the academy.
Students from both the campuses finished class XII with exceptional grades. A total of 380 students passed out of the Academy this year with a whopping 259 students scoring above 80%, out of which 93 students scored above 90%.

The graduating students have secured admission in India’s top institutions like Delhi University, NIT, Jamia Milia University, Aligarh Muslim University, NIFT etc.for higher education.Six students also went on to study abroadto prestigious institutions like University of MassachusettsAmherst, Wellesley College, Purdue University, Virginia Tech, Pennsylvania State University and the University of California, Davis.

The three-stage admission process at VidyaGyan constitutes:
• Preliminary written test in all districts of UP
• Written test for children shortlisted in the preliminary round
• Interaction with the selected students and their families

Eligibility criteria:
• Applicants should be studying inGradeV in a rural school
• Age of girls should be less than or equal to 13 years and age of boys should be less or equal to 12 years
• Students should belong to rural, low-income households (with a combined family income of not more than Rs.1 lakh per annum).