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 ike many Trustee Scholars, Krupali Tejura found some of the nation’s top colleges and universities seeking to enroll her during her senior year of high school. Turning down full-tuition scholarship offers from Berkeley and UCLA, and rejecting other universities such as Dartmouth, Georgetown and Wellesley, Tejura chose USC after visiting the campus and receiving a dean’s scholarship. She then applied for and received a Trustee Scholarship.
In her junior year, Tejura was inducted into both Phi Kappa Phi (which requires a 3.9 or higher GPA) and Phi Beta Kappa, two honor societies that normally admit only those in their senior year. Now a senior, the biology and sociology double-major has completed research projects in neurobiology and molecular biology under the mentorship of professors William Mc Clure and Leslie Bell, respectively.
Intending to become a doctor, and perhaps a neurosurgeon, Tejura was admitted to USC’s B.A./M.D. program and has spent every summer since 1991 working in a philanthropic hospital in India, where she had the opportunity to assist in an open-heart surgery.
“Working there inspired me to become a doctor,” she says. Besides volunteering at the Sri Satya Sai Institute of Higher Medical Sciences, she traveled throughout India as part of a University of Pennsylvania study-abroad program, learning about the culture and about traditional medicine there.
Not content with the prospect of earning only a medical degree, Tejura says she also plans to get a J.D., M.B.A. or master’s in public health. As a resident adviser in North Residential College this year, and a leader and volunteer in many student-run organizations, she has experience in balancing a heavy work load.
Tejura took time off from her USC activities last fall to attend Harvard as a visiting scholar. Toward the end of her stay there, she was offered the opportunity to enroll as a transfer student. Tejura declined the invitation.
“At Harvard, I was lost in a sea of students,” she says. “Here at USC, the professors and administrators are accessible and committed to undergraduates.”
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