For Immediate Release

Lore India Foundation Launches National Scholarship Program worth Rs 55 million for School Students

- All students of Classes X, XI & XII are eligible, pan India.
- The Learning Aptitude Test (LAT) to identify the most meritorious students.
- Career guidance and mentoring by Governance Council.
- Test to be conducted in English and Hindi

New Delhi, July 14, 2014: Lore India Foundation Scholarship Trust today announced the launch of a pioneering scholarship program that will identify, assess, reward and mentor the brightest young minds in India. The program is open to school students from classes X, XI and XII from across India and is the nation’s largest scholarship program and national benchmarking initiative. More than 100 of the most brilliant students will be identified through a scientifically evolved Learning Aptitude Test (LAT), designed by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) with the help of acclaimed education scientists. Qualifying students will receive cash scholarships from a generous corpus of Rs. 55 million and also benefit from valuable mentoring and coaching provided by renowned academicians. Once selected, the Scholars will undergo a comprehensive interest schedule/psychometric analysis to gain insights that will allow experts to provide them effective guidance in their educational careers.

LAT is devised to test a child’s aptitude or innate brain power as opposed to their academic learning. The National Scholarship Program is guided by TCS and a stellar body of academic stalwarts that constitute Lore India Foundation’s Governing Council, including both current and retired professors from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Indian School of Business (ISB), Medical Council of India and University Grants Commission (UGC), among others.

The Lore India Foundation Scholarship Trust believes that every student must have an opportunity to pursue her/his dream career and enrol in academic courses of her/his choice. The Undergraduate Scholarship endowments can be used by Scholars to pursue higher education in any discipline. It can be also used to prepare for coaching required for entrance exams to get admission to a program of the Scholar’s choice. The scholarship amount is set up as an interest generating trust fund available to the Scholar to draw upon for a period of seven years from the date of the award.

Administered in English and Hindi, the LAT will assess the candidate's aptitude and not the extent of knowledge in subjects. The emphasis will be on analytical and logical reasoning, reading comprehension and puzzles. The key differentiator between this and other scholarships is that, here, the quality of education a student has received so far does not become an overriding factor in identifying the brightest candidate. LAT, in fact, is designed to provide a level playing field for students to compete irrespective of their socio-economic status, geography or educational background. The focus in on the child’s merit and merit alone.

In order to avail of this opportunity, students will have to apply online on http://lorefoundation.org. Registrations open on July 14, 2014. The registered students will then have to appear for LAT.

Explaining the need for the LAT and the scholarship program, Prof. Seyed E. Hasnain (Padma Shri), Professor, IIT-Delhi says, “In the context of the current education system, we believe that the scholarships will bring in immense parity amongst students from across different states and Boards. Currently, there is a very clear disconnect between the marks scored in the State Boards that account for 95 percent of students vs. the Central Boards that account for the balance 5 percent only.” Further emphasizing this point, Prof. Hasnain added, “The State Boards are much more stringent about marking than the Central Boards, leading to a completely skewed evaluation system that, by no means, reflects the academic aptitude or merit of the child. This leaves a vast majority of the student population of our country relatively disadvantaged. LAT is a brave, new and different way of evaluating the academic competence of children today that will help circumvent this gap.”
Speaking about the philosophy behind the LAT system Mr. Venguswamy Ramaswamy, Director Tata Consultancy Services, Global Head TCS Ion says “Our focus is to deliver an assessment that can give a level-playing field to all students irrespective of their social, economic backgrounds, gender, exposure to rural or urban schools and their current academic levels in subject domains. We use a powerful set of tools and technologies that ensures an accurate assessment of the students’ academic aptitude”
This Scholarship Program comes with another unique feature to help promote quality learning infrastructure at school levels. This includes a Rewards and Recognitions Program for Schools to enable them to fund meritorious students from disadvantaged backgrounds, improve school infrastructure and acquire new technology and learning tools for a complete classroom experience. Schools shall be ranked based on the performance of their students in LAT. The top 3 schools in the country shall receive monetary awards of Rs. 25 Lac, Rs. 15 Lac and Rs. 10 Lac respectively.

About Learning Aptitude Test
The LAT as a testing platform has been devised after extensive research by TCS with the help of acclaimed education scientists.

LAT - 2014
RANK SCHOLARSHIP AMOUNT
1st Rs. 50,00,000
2nd Rs. 30,00,000
3rd Rs. 20,00,000
4th- 53rd Rs. 5,00,000 each
54th-103rd Rs. 3,00,000 each

The Governing Council of the Lore India Foundation has played an instrumental role in designing and delivering LAT. This stellar body comprises academic stalwarts, such as:
Prof. Seyed E. Hasnain (Padma Shri), Professor, IIT- Delhi;
Dr. Hari Gautam, Former Chairman, UGC; President, MGUMST, Jaipur;
Dr. S. B. Siwach, Chairman, Post Graduate Committee, Medical Council of India;
Prof. Ranbir Singh, Vice-Chancellor, National Law University, Delhi;
Prof. (Dr.) Prem Vrat, Former Director, IIT-Roorkee; Pro-Chancellor, ITM University;
Prof. Biju Paul Abraham Professor, IIM Calcutta; VP, Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute;
Mr. Deepak Chandra, Deputy Dean, ISB, Hyderabad
Prof. (Dr.) V. Vijayakumar, Professor & UNHCR Chair on Refugee Law, National Law School of India University, Bangalore.

About Lore India Foundation Scholarship Trust

The Lore India Foundation Scholarship Trust is a social entrepreneurial venture initiated by the Lore India Foundation Pvt. Ltd. The fund has been incorporated as a response to a huge need in India for a mentorship program backed by financial aid to bring brilliant yet academically underprivileged students from across India at par with the best, in accessing higher educational opportunities. In addition to this current Scholarship Program through LAT for school students, plans are in pipeline for a similarly generous scholarship program for college students, to be selected through an Advanced Learning Aptitude Test (ALAT).
Initially seeded by Lore India Foundation Pvt. Ltd, the fund corpus is built on a sustainability model generating and expanding its own corpus to help grow the number of scholarship beneficiaries year after year. It also hopes to build a powerful alumni, mentor and Scholar community that can form an influential network to promote the goals of this innovative educational-social movement!

For more details please contact:
Ritu
PR 24x7 Network Ltd.
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