THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: From sending an application to Harvard just because he didn't want to give it a miss to being placed in Microsoft with a hefty pay packet, Abhijith Asok, from Vazhuthacaud in the city has come a long way.Not just that. Keen on maintaining his identity and to stand apart from the crowd, Abhijith decided to wear traditional Kerala attire for his Harvard graduation ceremony, besides taking the pledge in Malayalam.
Says Abhijith, “Each school at Harvard has its own ceremonies during their convocation proceedings. The Harvard T H Chan School of Public Health has an award ceremony prior to the grand convocation ceremony, which is kicked off by an event where 15 people from the graduating cohort of the school across all degrees get up on stage in their traditional attire and read one article each from the Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in their own native language. I believe it symbolises the importance of human rights around the world. I was one among the 15 this time and read Article 1 of the Preamble in Malayalam, wearing a mundu and kurta. I decided to go for it because everyone knew me as 'Indian' at that point of time and I wanted to uphold the Kerala culture and my Malayali identity as well in front of the international audience,” he said.
According to him, Harvard was not his first choice. “I never expected to get into Harvard. Applying to Harvard was a big question mark because, on one side, I almost did not make the deadline for the application. I thought it would be just a waste of effort since the picture of Harvard was always projected as an unachievable feat in my head,” he said.
As to the process of applying to Harvard, Abhijith said, “I submitted an online application. At the time of when I applied, going for masters abroad was a long-term plan, doing an MS specifically was probably a 2.5-year old plan while an MS in Data Science/Analytics/Business Analytics was probably a 1-year old plan.”
"I gave my GRE and TOEFL exams in June/July of 2016 and spent the next few weeks preparing my essays and arranging my recommenders for recommendation letters, among my professors from BITS Pilani and the people I had worked within the industry till then. The application for scholarships was open approximately a week after the main application. The admission result came out in early March 2017 and the scholarship came out about 2 weeks later. I was the first recipient of Harvard's Karuna Majumdar Fellowship,” he said.
On placement in Microsoft, Abhijith said, “Since I have signed an NDA with Microsoft, I won't be able to share many specificities of the interview, but the position is based in Microsoft's 'New England Research and Development Center' in Boston.”
His advice to youngsters, “I was never a straight-A student. I didn't even know that something called Data Science existed, a little over three years before I made my application. Everything just fell in place as I went ahead. My moments of clarity were always achieved with much effort."