An Indian expat boy has received acceptances from 23 universities in the West, including four Ivy League institutions for his undergraduate studies. Aman Burman, 18, is sitting on a plate full of university acceptances and a tough decision to make with respect to his choice of college.
Speaking to Gulf News, Burman said he has received acceptances into Cornell, Brown, UPenn (University of Pennsylvania) and Columbia in the US, besides 19 other top-tier American universities including Caltech, Carnegie Mellon, UCLA and McGill (Canada) among others.
Aman said that the college application process was definitely a difficult task for him. “What helped me ace the applications was the balance I created with respect to my academics and extracurricular activities.”
Aman said his father studied computer engineering at the National Institute of Technology in Jaipur and his MBA from HEC, Paris. “He worked for a bank for 10 years where differential calculus, first and second-order derivatives were an integral part of his daily discussions. I grew up hearing terminologies such as delta, gamma, and vega which I later learned are first and second-order derivatives of option pricing. So, mathematics was an integral part of our environment. My mother did a Bachelor of Arts and had been a homemaker for a major part of my life. I saw her transforming herself from a homemaker to running a successful STEM education business with operations in Dubai and India.”
Aman developed an interest in physics and the sciences at a very young age.
“I first got a taste of astronomy and the cosmos when I was selected to participate in the CTD (Center for Talent Development) program at Northwestern University at the age of nine. I attended the Life on Mars course which introduced me to planetary science. Later, at CTY, Johns Hopkins University, I took a course on Inductive and Deductive Reasoning in Grade 5 (at the age of 12).”
This pretty much set the tone for his quest to undergraduate studies.
