80-year-old engineer qualifies for IIT entrance exam

Weekly exams on all four subjects (a total of 16 exams) were conducted, and candidates had to score minimum 50 % marks in all the subjects to qualify for the final entrance exam.

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras conducted an entrance exam for its BSc online course in programming and data science on Sunday, i.e. June 5, 2022. Among several other candidates was an Eighty-year-old city-based engineer Nandakumar K Menon.

After passing a rigorous qualification process to appear for the entrance exam, Nandakumar had to convince security guards that he was one of the candidates for the exam. The entrance exam was conducted at the premises of an IT firm off Aluva.

“I was stopped at the gate by security guards and had to convince them that I was a candidate for the entrance exam,” he told The Hindu.

After appearing for a four-hour-long entrance exam, Menon talked about how more than 90 per cent of the total 120 candidates at the centre were youth. Talking about attempting questions mainly on mathematics, statistics, data processing, and English, Menon added, “I rummaged through what I learnt over 50 years ago.”

According to the news portal, in order to prepare for the entrance exam, Menon and his son Sethu Nandakumar, a UAE-based lawyer, attend four-week-long classes in the four subjects. While Sethu couldn’t qualify stating that questions on mathematics were a tad too tough for a person pursuing a doctorate in space laws but his dad did.

Weekly exams on all the four subjects (a total of 16 exams) were conducted, and candidates had to score minimum 50 % marks in all the subjects to qualify for Sunday’s entrance exam.

Menon who would soon be turning 81-year-old in August woke up at 5:30 am each day and studied meticulously until 10 pm as he prepared for the entrance, his son told.

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