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Student Application

Student Application

"The joy in solving a problem comes from the mathematical journey your curiosity takes you on." Professor Ila Varma, Director of PROMYS India

The application for PROMYS India 2025 is closed

Applicants will be emailed with their admission decision by 11:59 PM on 1st April, 2025.

Sign up HERE to be notified by email when the application for 2026 becomes available.

Eligibility

  • Applicants must attend secondary or higher secondary school in India in Standards IX - XII (or +1, +2, or PUC). Students must have completed (or currently be in) Standard IX before the start of the programme. Students are still eligible to apply if they are just completing their final year of higher secondary school (or taking a gap year) but have not yet begun their university studies.
  • Students attending government-funded schools, government aided private schools, unaided private or independent schools, sixth form colleges, home schools, and other types of secondary or higher secondary schools in India are all eligible to apply.
  • Applicants must be at least 15 years old by 11 May 2025. (We do not anticipate that any exceptions will be made, but students who are very close to 15 can apply if they wish.) Most students will be older than 15. Students are no longer eligible if they will be 19 or older at the start of the programme.
  • Students who are already attending university are NOT eligible to be first-year students (though they may be eligible to apply to be undergraduate counsellors).
  • Lectures, discussions, and problem sets at PROMYS India are all in English. Applicants should possess English language skills sufficient to enable full participation.
  • There are no financial requirements of any sort for eligibility or participation in PROMYS India. Every student who is accepted to PROMYS India 2025 will automatically be awarded a full scholarship which will cover all tuition, housing and meal costs for the six weeks of the programme. Applicants may apply for additional need-based funding for travel and laundry. There are no required books.


Please note that students may not apply to PROMYS India and to PROMYS at Boston University in the U.S. for the same summer. They may apply to only one. Please also note that while students at PROMYS India 2025 will all be awarded full scholarships, PROMYS in the U.S. is not free. Students who would need financial assistance to attend PROMYS Boston are expected to apply instead to PROMYS India.

Both PROMYS and PROMYS India being highly selective, students in India will have a higher chance of being admitted if they apply to PROMYS India rather than PROMYS.

PROMYS India Application Process

There are four required components for first-year student applications and a fifth component if you need funding for travel and laundry:
1) Application Problem Set. It would not be inappropriate to think about the problems for several weeks.
2) School Report Card(s) - for all years from Standard IX and above (from Standard VIII and above for students applying in Standard IX). Copies of transcripts issued by an applicant's school are fine; it is not required that transcripts be from the Educational Boards. Homeschooled students should please upload a description of studies undertaken.
3) Online Application: You will be asked to upload your problem set solutions and school report card with your application.
4) Online Teacher Recommendation Form to be submitted by a mathematics teacher or mentor.
5) Optional Online Financial Form to be submitted by your parent or guardian IF your family would like to apply for need-based travel and laundry funding. This travel and laundry funding would be in addition to the full scholarship covering tuition, hostel and meals which is automatically awarded to each accepted student and for which no financial form is needed.

To Apply to PROMYS India 2025

Applications to PROMYS India are submitted through Submittable. Click on the "To Apply" button below and follow the simple instructions to set up your password-protected application portal. Submittable works best on Google Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. To access tech support from within the system, click on  . For other questions, you can email us at [email protected]. The application deadline is 15th January 2025 (11:59 PM IST). 

Four required components for the first-year student application:

1) Application Problem Set. It would not be inappropriate to think about and work on the problems for several weeks ahead of the deadline.

To be reviewed, all pages of your solutions upload must be clear and fully legible. Please ensure all pages are in portrait mode (vertical). We cannot read pages which are in landscape mode (horizontal). If your solutions are handwritten, they should be in black ink or dark pencil for legibility. Photos or scans need to be sharp and with good contrast. We cannot read solutions which are blurred or fuzzy. Make sure your solutions are not too faint to read (too much light) or too dark to read (not enough light/too much shadow). Please check every page for clarity.
Rough Work: In addition to the required solutions (or attempted solutions) to the application problems, the application includes an optional field for sharing your rough work on the problems, which is highly recommended. We expect your rough work to be messy and to contain mistakes and dead ends. Please do not tidy it up or copy it out. If we review your rough work, we want to see it as is.

2) School Report Card(s) - for all years from Standard IX and above (from Standard VIII and above for students applying in Standard IX). Copies of transcripts issued by your school are fine; it is not required that transcripts be from the Educational Boards. Homeschooled students should upload a description of studies undertaken.

3) Online Application Form: The application will require you to answer short questions and to upload your solutions to the application problems and your school report card. You will be able to save your progress on the application before your final submission.

4) Teacher Recommendation Form to be submitted by a mathematics teacher or mentor. This does not have to be your current teacher in school. You will be asked to enter your recommendation writer’s name and email address on the application form. When you click “Send Request Now,” the Submittable platform will email your recommendation writer a link to the recommendation form. We strongly recommend that you click the "Send Request Now" button NOW without waiting until you submit your application form.

Please inform your teacher that the submission deadline for the recommendation form is 15th January and that the link to the recommendation form will come from [email protected] and not from PROMYS India. It is your responsibility as applicant to ask your recommendation writer to submit your recommendation form and to follow up as needed. Your application will not be considered until your recommendation form has been received.

Within the Submittable portal, the recommender field of your application form (viewable under the "Saved Drafts" or "All Submissions" and then "Forms" tabs) will note whether a response has been received from your teacher. If you have already submitted your application, the Submittable system will notify you by email when your recommendation form has been received (please check your spam folder as well as your inbox).

5) Optional Financial Aid Form to be submitted by your parent or guardian ONLY if you are applying for need-based travel and laundry funding. This travel and laundry funding would be in addition to the full scholarship covering tuition, hostel and meals which is automatically awarded to each accepted student and for which no financial form is needed. You will be asked on the application form to enter the name and email address of the parent who will be completing your financial aid form. When you click “Send Request Now,” the Submittable platform will email your parent a link to the financial aid form. If you are applying for travel and laundry funding, we strongly recommend that you click the "Send Request Now" button now without waiting until you submit your application form. Please inform your parent or guardian that the deadline for submitting the financial aid form is 15th January and that the link to the form will come from [email protected] and not from PROMYS India. It is your responsibility as applicant to ensure your financial aid form is submitted by the deadline.

Applicants being considered for admission may be interviewed, in English, on Zoom or by telephone/WhatsApp.

Admissions Criteria

Admissions decisions will be based on the following criteria:

  • An applicant’s solutions to a set of challenging mathematical problems. Though they can all be solved with no more than a standard secondary school mathematics background, most of the problems require considerably more ingenuity than is usually expected in secondary school.
  • Teacher's recommendation.
  • Secondary school mark sheet (grade report or transcript) covering all years from Standard IX and above (from Standard VIII and above for students applying in Standard IX).
  • Applicant's responses relating to interest in the programme.
  • The mathematicians who assess solutions to the application problems do not simply add up the number of "correct" solutions; they assess applications holistically, taking into account the mathematical opportunities available to the applicant and evidence of characteristics such as mathematical creativity,  originality, clarity of thought, precision of expression, and perseverance.