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COMMUNITY
India Abroad
October 7, 2011
When the Massachusetts Institute of Technology invited the Advantage Testing Foundation Math Prize for
Girls to its campus, it gave the three-year-old competition, which was held earlier in
New York, a big boost. And when MIT
President Susan Hockfield joined Advantage
Testing Foundation President Arun
Alagappan last month, welcoming the parents and students including the top
$25,000 prize winner Victoria Xia of
Vienna, Virginia, the competition gained
more visibility and prestige. In all, the
foundation gave away $49,000 in prizes
this year.
“It offers the world’s largest cash prize in
a math contest for young women, and having a woman who is the president of MIT
joining our event was an awesome experience,” said Alagappan, who runs Advantage
Testing, a nationwide business that tutors
high school and college students in math
and sciences and also prepares them for
competitive college exams.
“Study after study has confirmed — the
nations that consistently perform the best
on international tests in math and science
are those in which there is less pronounced
disparity among men and women in those
disciplines,” he said. “Simply put, a nation is
strongest when it draws leaders from every
talent pool.”
The Math Prize is one of several pro-
grams Alagappan runs for minority stu-
dents. He takes time from his business to
teach math and law to college-bound stu-
dents, and spends thousands of dollars on
the empowering programs for students of
modest means, especially from the Latino
and African-American communities.
‘Arun Alagappan is helping to find the
next generation of leaders who will bring
diversity, new ideas, compassion and a different kind of leadership to institutions,’
The Wall Street Journal wrote recently.
A Princeton University and Harvard Law
School alumnus, Alagappan won the Class
of 1869 Prize in Ethics at Princeton. He has
sat on the board of editors of the Harvard
International Law Journal, and served as
law clerk to Judge Dorothy Nelson of the
United States Court of Appeals for the
Ninth Circuit. Alagappan was a teaching
fellow in Harvard’s Department of
Mathematics and was awarded a certificate
of distinction for outstanding teaching,
from the dean.
Alagappan’s Advantage Testing Foundation has contributed over $1 million to the
nonprofit, Leadership Enterprise for a
Diverse America. Alagappan, who is in his
early 50s, became involved with LEDA over
eight years ago. The foundation’s other programs include a joint effort with the
Columbia University Medical Center to
provide tutoring to college-age patients.
Alagappan also sends nearly three dozen
tutors from his company to LEDA’s sum-
Arun Alagappan, left, with Ramya Rangan, who won an honorable mention at the Math Prize for Girls
COUR TES Y: CASE Y HENRY/ADVAN TAGE TES TING FOUNDATION
With a little help from
Arun Alagappan
Arthur J Pais profiles a businessman who gives minority
girl students a hand up with math and science
Yale Professor and India Abroad Face of the Future 2009 winner Priyamvada Natarajan, left, with Ramya Rangan
mer institute at Princeton, an academically
intensive seven-week program that also has
leadership development courses. Students
get a quick but intensive run through the
entire college admissions process.
“Nothing in this is ever a handout; on the
other hand it is a hand up,” Alagappan said.
“I have to say, youngsters that age, working
that hard in the summer before senior year
for seven weeks… it’s a lot of hard work and
there are tears. It’s intense and it surely can
be life transforming.”
It costs LEDA about $22,000 to guide
each student from the fall of his/her junior
year through college graduation. LEDA
says its students are represented at every
Ivy League school and at virtually all other
leading colleges and universities. Over half
of the AT LEDA Scholars are the first in
their family to attend college. About 60 stu-
dents are trained by LEDA annually, with
the backing of Alagappan’s foundation.
Then there is Trials (Training and
Recruitment Initiative for Admission to
Leading Law Schools), a residential scholarship program that is a collaboration of
the AT Foundation, the Harvard Law
School, and the New York University
School of Law.
Arun Alagappan is the son of former
