Chennai: When 17-year-old Pranav Ilango leaves for the US later this month to begin his undergraduate studies at Brown University, his parents will be sending him on a flight they once dreamed of.Pranav, from Erode, has won a full scholarship worth ₹3.55 crore to study at Brown, where he plans to pursue a bachelor’s degree combining applied mathematics and public health. His mother, Bhuvaneshwarri Ilango, and father, Ilango Veluchamy, both college professors, may not be able to afford a trip to see their only child off and will have to save up to make it to his convocation at the end of his four-year course.“He was born after eight years of our marriage. We are sad to send him alone, but we are so proud of him and his hard work,” said Bhuvaneshwarri.Pranav’s journey to an Ivy League university began with an unconventional academic choice. No one in his family had studied under the CBSE or ICSE boards. After Class V, Pranav’s teacher suggested he be shifted to Cambridge IGCSE, saying he was a fast learner.But in Class VIII, they had to take the risk of foregoing the JEE and NEET path by continuing in IGCSE. That was when Pranav saw in the newspaper that a girl from Erode bagged a scholarship to study in Chicago. “Looking at that, I thought I could do it too,” he said. He also enrolled with Dexterity Global, a national educational organisation.He continued the Cambridge programme in Erode till Class X and moved to Coimbatore to complete his studies, where he received a 50% tuition scholarship. He lived with his friend and his grandmother.For nearly four years, Pranav worked not just on academics but also on building a profile for university applications. “Preparing for JEE and NEET would take the same amount of effort as preparing for my US applications. I would rather go abroad. The advantage of this syllabus was that I got time to focus on extracurricular activities,” he said. He played chess, served as the school president and conducted cancer-awareness campaigns that reached around 40,000 people across Erode, Salem and Udumalpet.Pranav hopes to return to India and launch a startup of his own in public health.
