A visit to the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) was organised for Grade 8 board toppers from Sargodha, Khushab and Mandi Bahudin. The visit was arranged by LUMS NOP Centre with the help of a NOP Scholar, Bilal Hassan. Bilal is a LUMS alumnus from the Class of 2015 and is currently working with PESP2 as a District Coordinator (Sargodha, Khushab and Mandi Bahudin region). PESP2 is a project of Adam Smith International who fund financially disadvantaged students all over Pakistan. The main objective of the visit was to inculcate future aspirations at a relatively earlier stage, to encourage students to explore LUMS and see what the University has to offer.
The visitors to LUMS included 45 male students, 30 female students and 15 faculty and district officials. They were given a campus tour during which they visited all the Schools at LUMS, the Gad & Birgit Rausing Library, IST Labs, Sports Complex, REDC and PDC facilities. The campus tour was followed by a National Outreach Programme (NOP) presentation where a brief introduction about the programme, eligibility criteria and statistics were shown. A keen interest was shown by the visitors who enquired about other NOP details and benefits.
The NOP Centre also planned an activity/counseling session for the students and shortlisted a few current NOP scholars who were from the same region for this task. Muhammad Farhan and Noor e Kainat, a current senior and junior student respectively, shared their stories of how they discovered the LUMS National Outreach Programme, how they applied and what were the challenges they faced to secure this scholarship. They also motivated the students by sharing their experiences and how LUMS has reshaped their lives. This was extremely motivational for the visitors as they had two things in common - hard work and coming from the same region.
