When I started at Oxford, I was the only one in my class who was from Pakistan. Whereas other nationalities had significant representation, it saddened me that a country of more than 200 million people could hardly send ANYONE to top universities worldwide. The only people who seem to have gotten into such institutions are either politicians’ children or are coming from wealthy families otherwise.
Pakistan’s three-tiered education system seems to be the culprit in which around 56% of the students attend public schools under the board system; of the remaining 44% of students in private schools, 35% are in the board system while less than 10% students who belong to upper class go to Cambridge system based private schools. Of these three tiers, the students attending the elite schools learning the Cambridge-based system seem to be the only ones remotely equipped to apply to international schools. This system eliminates more than 90% of the students from contention even before applications are submitted.
These students of public schools and board-based private schools don’t develop enough critical skills to sit in standardized tests like SAT, GRE, and GMAT.
They don’t have enough writing ability to formulate their thoughts in the application essays accurately.
They don’t get to participate in extra-curricular activities to develop their leadership skills which these top-tier universities highly covet.
They don’t have any guidance to go through the application process, how best to present themselves and put their best foot forward.
All of these things contribute to almost no representation of Pakistani students in top-tier universities worldwide. The few like us who finally get there find themselves alone, having no representation in the student body and bearing the burden of being the representatives of Pakistan.
I conceived Zaawia to change some of that by connecting students in this 90 % student demographic with the right resources, including, but not limited to, standardized tests prep, fellowships to guide students through the whole process, and mentorship programs to assign mentors to Pakistani students from the international community.
The starting goal is to provide resources to at least 150 students applying to top universities worldwide. With time, as we expand more resources, we’ll continue to increase those numbers and hope to someday have Pakistani representation in top universities proportionate to its population.