Shreya Suri

The mission of Foundation For Excellence (FFE) is to help exceptionally talented but poor students in India become doctors, engineers, and computer scientists. FFE awards scholarships to recent high school students who have overcome the adversity of their family's circumstances to be among the top rankers in national/state level common entrance tests, based on which they have secured admissions to quality engineering and medical colleges. FFE is unique in terms of its focus. We fund the most talented students and help them pursue the most expensive education in India. The rationale is simple. Given the level of tuition and other fees in professional colleges, the poor have no chance today to pursue their dreams of becoming engineers or doctors. These students cannot get educational loans from banks either given the insistence of banks in India for history of banking relationships and a need for collateral. However, the earning potential of these professions is very high. An engineer, doctor or computer scientist earns enough to help his/her family financially, lifting the whole family out of the poverty trap. student also becomes a role model in the community inspiring others to pursue this path. In other words, the multiplier effect on the society of enabling a talented child to become an high income earning professional is huge. By a conservative estimate, each rupee invested in a talented child returns 140x to the society. FFE is unique in one other way - it is self sustaining. Each scholarship recipient from FFE makes a pledge to support at least two more students once he/she has the capacity to do so. This pledge provides a built in mechanism for the future sustainability of the scholarship program.