Indore/ Barwaha: Born and brought up in a village, 27-year-old Prateek Mukati has brought laurels to Madhya Pradesh by obtaining full scholarship of Rs 1.5 crore ($43,300 per annum) along with starting stipend of Rs 24 lakh ($35,250 per annum) at Yale University, US. This is his latest achievement though. His other achievements include excelling in Joint Entrance Screening Test (JEST) 2006 and 2019 with All India Rank 1. Prateek is now an inspiration for aspirants.
Prateek who grew up in Barwaha (Khargone district) and studied in a Hindi medium school (Saraswati Shishu Mandir) drew inspiration from his maternal grandfather Balram Yadav to go for higher studies. “My dad (Nandram is a farmer) and mother (Pushpa) supported and encouraged me fully. They helped me in striving towards my dreams,” Prateek said. His parents shifted him to an English medium school in Khargone after he cleared class X.
“I wanted to learn, so I studied and cleared IIT JEE with AIR 4 after 12th, which helped me in getting admission in IIT Ropar, Punjab,” Prateek said. Being one of the top students, he got placement in a software company in Noida with good pay package. “I was settled but did not feel passionate about my work. My interest was in physics,” Prateek said. Leaving the job after two years to follow his passion, he moved to Indore and studied physics. “I read books and educated myself with every aspect of the subject,” he said.
After a year of self-study, he appeared for NET 2015, JEST 2016, Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) 2016 and Joint Admission Test (JAM) by IITs and cleared all of them with flying colours. “I did my three-year masters from The International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, Bangalore,” Prateek said. Looking for more opportunities to learn, he took Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) and JEST 2019 as a back up.
“I received scholarship and call letters from Yale University, Pennsylvania State University, University of Maryland, University of Colorado Boulder and University of California,” Prateek said. He has chosen to go to Yale. “The only trouble I had in clearing GRE and have to take an academic language course at Yale is because of language,” Prateek said.
