Learning has no age. An eighty-one-year-old man has appeared for the entrance test at IIT-Madras to pursue B.Sc in programming and data science
Nandakumar K. Menon of Madras appeared for the entrance exam of the BSc. online course offered by IIT-Madras. The entrance exam was held at the premises of an IT firm off Aluva.
As a part of preparations, Menon used to wake up at 5.30 AM every day and studied meticulously till 10 PM. Besides, he along with his son Sethu Nandakumar, a UAE-based lawyer, attended four-week-long classes in the four subjects.
Menon had to appear in weekly exams on four subjects – mathematics, statistics, data processing, and English- (a total of 16 exams) and had to score a minimum of 50 % marks in all the subjects to qualify for Sunday’s entrance exam, which Sethu couldn’t qualify.
Menon always wanted to become an engineer ever since he was in the fourth standard. However, faced with financial difficulties, he went on to graduate in mathematics and spent a year in MSc. Statistics. Then he graduated from the College of Engineering Trivandrum.
Menon did his post-graduation in cryogenic engineering from Syracuse University, US, with a NASA-sponsored scholarship. He had got a green card that allows a non-U.S. citizen to gain permanent residence in the United States. But he gave up this only to work as an engineer in his motherland.
Menon said that he had to convince the security guards, who stopped him at the gate, to allow him to write the four-hour-long online examination.
Over 90 % of the about 120 candidates who appeared for the online exam at the center were youth, he added.
