“To offer students a unique, unparalleled, and transformative college experience.”
UWC Mahindra College (MUWCI) was founded in 1997 in Mulshi, Maharashtra. It was a first-of-its-kind experiment: India's only UWC pre-university college. That November, 91 students arrived from all corners of the globe to a bare hillside with far more vision than infrastructure and began building a community that had never been done before in the country.
Over the last decades, the hillside that was bare on arrival supports a thriving biodiversity reserve. Every tree was planted by a student or teacher who lived there.
"In MUWCI, every experience counts, and every experience is a life lesson. My MUWCI experience did not stop at Mulshi Valley. It is with me today, tomorrow and every single day of my life."
The early years
The road to MUWCI's founding took seventeen years of groundwork. The UWC India National Committee was established in 1980. Government approval came in 1993. The foundation stone was laid in 1996 on a hillside in the Mulshi valley, in Pune, Maharashtra.
On 11 November 1997, Queen Noor of Jordan inaugurated the college. Ninety-one students from across the world began their two-year IB Diploma programme. It was the first UWC college in India. It remains the only one.
Everything on that hill today was built or grown by the people who came through it. Trees, paths, gardens, community. The biodiversity reserve that surrounds the campus began with a Kotak Group donation in 2006. Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh formally inaugurated it as Van Vihar Biodiversity Park on the college's tenth anniversary in 2008.
Pioneering curriculum development
MUWCI has never been a passive recipient of educational frameworks. It helps write them. The IB often invites schools with experienced faculty and a track record of innovation to help pilot and develop new subject curricula.
MUWCI is one of those schools. It has helped develop Global Politics, World Religions, Film Studies and World Studies Extended Essays. The World Studies Extended Essay was pioneered by MUWCI in 2003.
The Triveni programme, also known as Experiential Learning, goes well beyond the IB's CAS requirements. It includes mandatory on- and off-campus service, creative projects, and two weeks of project-based learning that takes students across India.
Recognised by those who know what to look for
MUWCI is fully accredited by the Council of International Schools (CIS), a recognition received in 2018 after a rigorous external evaluation. It is also a member of the International Baccalaureate Organisation.
Neither accreditation is decorative. Both reflect what actually happens here: in classrooms, on the hill, and across the country during four weeks of experiential learning.
Both reflect the lived reality of our curriculum: an education where experiential learning is not confined to off-campus travel, but actively woven into every classroom, onto the hill, and into the very fabric of daily life.
Milestones in the MUWCI journey.
A volunteer committee to select Indian students applying to UWCs worldwide is founded.
Indian Government Cabinet Committee grants permission for establishing the establishment of MUWCI.
UWC India announces its intention to build MUWCI at Mulshi, Pune.
Foundation stone laid at Mulshi. Construction of the campus begins on the hillside above the villages of Mulshi Taluka.
Explore IBDP
MUWCI Core Courses are another special aspect of the curriculum. A unique internal curriculum that explores Culture and Peace Studies, Sustainability and the Climate Crisis, Health and Well-being, and Digital Literacy and AI. Designed and revised each year in response to what the student body and the world currently need, no two years are the same.
Explore the IB Diploma at MUWCIWhat this means for you
Whether you are a student weighing your options, a parent trying to understand what two years at a place like this actually does to a young person, or an alumnus thinking about giving back, the story of MUWCI is still being written by everyone who passes through it.
You are invited to be part of what comes next
