Age is just a number! This 80-year-old Engineer appears IIT Entrance Exam
Age is just a number and it does not matter how old you may be when it comes to education. All that matters is to have the enthusiasm or interest to study and learn things. An eighty-year-old engineer has literally proved this when he appeared the IIT Madras entrance exam.
The engineer, who would turn 81 years in August, has been identified as Nandakumar K. Menon of Madras. He appeared for the entrance exam of the BSc. online course in programming and data science offered by IIT-Madras. The entrance exam was held at the premises of an IT firm off Aluva on Sunday.
With an aim to pass the IIT Madras entrance exam, 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 weekly exams on four subjects – mathematics, statistics, data processing, and English- (a total of 16 exams), and had to score minimum 50 % marks in all the subjects to qualify for Sunday’s entrance exam, which Sethu couldn’t qualify.
Inspired by the celebrated engineer of yore M. Visvesvaraya, Menon always wanted to become an engineer ever since he was in 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.
Thereafter, Menon dis his post graduation in cryogenic engineering from Syracuse University, US, with a NASA-sponsored scholarship. He had got the 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.
While speaking to the media persons about the entrance exam of the BSc. online course in programming and data science offered by IIT-Madras, 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 the online exam at the centre were youth, he added.
Ms Kalinga
Congratulation sir I m 33years old and want to appear at polytechnic course in kolkata but my surroundings always against of it now at least I will proceed with courage
Respected
Sir
Really I’m impressed on your caption.
Age is just a number.
Age is not a barriers for education.
Warm regards
Upendra Panda
Sound recodist.
Such a great person. Best example and inspiration to the educated people, who didn’t reach their goals ,but still hesitate to work on them because of age limit.