Rajshahi’s Mita Khatun, a final-year sociology student at the University of Dhaka and resident of Shamsunnahar Hall, has been recommended in the 49th Special BCS—one of just 15 candidates selected from her discipline—capping a years-long struggle through poverty, debt, and repeated setbacks.
Mita grew up in Bagha upazila’s Chaknarayanpur village, where her father, Mahabul Islam, returned after a difficult stint in Dhaka as a rickshaw driver. Back home he opened a small tea stall, selling biscuits and bananas—still the family’s only income source—supplemented by microcredit loans that required monthly installments. School life meant constant compromises: she often bought “auxiliary” textbooks one by one, after exams had already begun, and her grades suffered in early terms.
Despite topping her class, Mita was steered away from the science stream in secondary school because of costs. Her science teacher, Sajidul Islam, tried to keep her in science—sending her back three days in a row when she came for humanities books—but financial reality prevailed. Even so, she scored GPA-5 in SSC in 2017 (1,194 marks, the highest in humanities in her upazila) from Rahmatullah Balika High School, and again GPA-5 in HSC in 2019 (1,141 marks), from Mozahar Hossain Mohila Degree College.
Her mother, Selina Begum, quietly prepared for the next hurdle. From Mita’s SSC scholarship, she bought two goats so there would be something to sell for university admission. Teachers raised contributions, and the then-UNO Shahin Reza also assisted, enabling Mita to pursue her dream at Dhaka University’s sociology department.
The pandemic sent her back to Bagha, where she resumed tutoring—work she began in class seven—to help cover both household costs and her father’s loan installments. After campuses reopened, she struggled to find tuition in Dhaka because of bias against non-STEM majors, eventually securing a distant assignment for Tk 4,000 a month with a finder’s fee and no guarantees. Success with that student brought more families, and Mita kept four tuitions at a time to stay afloat. “Either I covered the installments and my father paid for the household, or I ran the household and he paid the installments,” she said of the juggle that defined her university years.
Ahead of the BCS viva, department chair Prof. Fatema Regina Iqbal learned Mita planned to borrow a friend’s sari. Late that night, the professor sent one of her own—“a beautiful sari,” Mita recalled—which she wore to the interview.
On November 11, when the Public Service Commission published the 49th Special BCS final results, Mita’s name appeared on the shortlist for sociology. She called home: “Ma, your daughter is a cadre,” she told Selina, who broke down in tears. Her father urged everyone to be strong, but the family “cried together,” Mita said.
Mita, who also supports her younger brother, Ma’im Islam, a top student in class nine, says she wants a career of public service—and to secure a better life for her parents. “I’ve heard many ‘no’s,” she said. “This ‘yes’ belongs to my mother, my teachers, and everyone who believed I could get here.”