Minerva Schools at KGI: 14 Pakistani students win coveted scholarship

Six girls, eight boys from Peshawar, Abbottabad, Kahuta, Lahore and Islamabad have been selected

LAHORE: Fourteen students from different cities across Pakistan have qualified to be a part of a unique undergraduate programme, offering a global learning experience through studies in seven countries.

Every year Minerva Schools at KGI – a San Francisco-based, non-profit university – selects students based on its own assessment criteria from all over the world and provides need-based financial assistance to them.

The innovative university was founded as a partnership between the Minerva Project and Keck Graduate Institute, a member of the Claremont University Consortium.



From Pakistan, the Minerva Schools at KGI has announced enrolment of 14 students on scholarships in its batch starting 2017.

Six girls and eight boys from Peshawar, Abbottabad, Kahuta, Lahore and Islamabad have been selected this year with scholarships ranging between 60 per cent and 100 per cent. The majority of students have received around 90 per cent scholarships covering tuition and accommodation.

Muhammad Haysam Azhar from Rawalpindi, who has been selected for the programme said, “For me, Minerva is a catalyst of a badly needed change in the educational system of the world.”



He said Minerva had laid down some fundamental principles for the educational system of the future like no quota system. “Apart from these fundamental groundbreaking changes, Minerva gives global education rather than just an international one, an important distinction to make. As a Minervan, you are an experiential learner and an ambassador of the world, solving global issues in multiple contexts, at seven destinations of the world.”

Another selected student, Adeena Ahsan from Kahuta said, “Being a former exchange student, having studied in three different educational systems (Matric, American High Schools and A levels) the traditional colleges didn't seem the right fit for me. Minerva seemed like the only selective college where international students are not a minority. Studying while traveling across the world and learning about different cultures excites me the most, when the whole world is your classroom, as in Pakistan my family didn't travel at all, and it's my dream to travel and learn about different cultures. This is really important to me as unity is what we all need in the recent times.”

For Nafayal Mobeen, a resident of Peshawar, the opportunity to be selected for the programme gives an opportunity to seek a radically different educational system. She said, “It is a place where I can spend the four most formative years of my life. I will not only emerge as an undergraduate but as an aware, informed, culturally enriched, humble and successful person. Hailing from Peshawar the dream of mine to attend this prestigious school seemed almost unattainable, but I strived despite our system and here I am about to attend a college that screams revolutionised education”.



Talking to The Express Tribune, Minerva Managing Director for Africa and The Middle East Fatou Badiane-Toure said, “We are aiming for a higher intake of students from Pakistan. The intensive four-year experience at Minerva is deliberately designed to challenge the students accelerating their intellectual growth and preparing them for success in today's rapidly changing and interconnected global context.”

The students at Minerva will be provided the opportunity to learn 21st century skills with the world’s brightest students and veteran experts from multiple fields of study, through seminars, and projects with coveted institutions and companies, Fatou added.

Minerva Schools at KGI Middle East and North Africa Regional Manager Naveed Ejaz said, “The education will not just impact four years, it will also define how students learn and shape the way they think for the rest of their lives. Minerva pushes the students in ways no other education will, teaching the students the skills needed to solve the most complex problems of our time.”

The selected students will spend time in up to seven residence houses in San Francisco, Berlin, Buenos Aires in Argentina, Seoul in South Korea, Bangalore in India, Istanbul and London.