Young India Fellowship

Applications are invited for Young India Fellowship’s Class of 2015, the fourth edition of the multi-disciplinary fellowship that’s fostering India’s academic, social and business leaders of the future.

The latest batch, which will begin sessions in June next year, will again reap the benefits of YIF’s continuing association with academic partners, the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania and top international Liberal Arts colleges, Sciences Po, in France, and Carleton College, in the U.S.

YIF Dean, Dr. Pramath Raj Sinha, the founding Dean of the Indian School of Business, said it was exciting to see the programme enter into the fourth year. “YIF has now well and truly proved itself with Fellows being offered admission in institutions such as Oxford and Wharton and placements at the World Bank, McKinsey & Company, Amnesty International and WWF,” Dr. Sinha said.

YIF offers a rolling admission process, split into two rounds. Admissions opened on September 5, and will close on February 28, 2014. Round one admission will close on December 15. “It’s prudent for an applicant to apply as early as possible in a rolling admission process because, as the admission process rolls on and Fellows keep getting selected in the earlier round, the number of seats available for the later rounds keeps reducing,” Deputy Dean, and Admissions Head, Dr Anunaya Chaubey, said.

YIF offers partial scholarships to successful applicants through Full Tuition and Half Tuition Scholarships. For the first time this year, an application fee of Rs. 1,000 will be charged. An application fee waiver is offered to applicants whose parents’ combined annual income is Rs. 2 lakh or less.

Last year, there were 18,676 registered applicants for the programme, up more than 60 per cent on 11,586 the year before, and almost three times the number in the inaugural year. The YIF Admissions Board oversaw 500 in-person interviews last year. This year, as in previous years, for Round 1, applicants’ personal interviews will be held in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Kolkata, while all in-person interviews for second-round applicants will be held in Delhi.

Graduates of the first two YIF batches have seen considerable success. In addition to some excellent admissions and placements, Fellows have been granted a Fulbright Scholarship, Commonwealth Scholarship and Prime Minister’s Rural Development Fellowship. One Young India Fellow has also returned from a year in Singapore to establish his own start-up developing a low-cost tablet computer for use in Indian schools. One Fellow has moved to Afghanistan to work for an NGO empowering local women. “These are among the many admirable achievements of the two batches to date,” said Dr Sinha. “We are very proud of the accomplishments of the Fellows so far, and are closely watching their rising stars.”

This year the YIF will move to the proposed Ashoka University campus at Sonepat, Haryana in the Delhi NCR, where graduates will have the option to stay on for a second year treating the Fellowship as the first year of a two-year Masters degree.