What “6–7” Reveals About the Minds of Today's Teens
TEDxBHIS Kanpur Youth — on attention, stimulation and belonging in a digital-first world.
Meet the founder
Shirish Gupta has spent 16 years helping students answer the question school never asks.
Not what marks did you get. Not which stream is safest. Just: what should you do next, and why that and not something else? Career & College Admissions Mentor, founder of Future Ready School, two-time TEDx speaker — and 40,000 students in.
A short introduction, in my own words.
16+Years mentoring students and parents
40,000+Students mentored
2TEDx talks
KotlerPhilip Kotler Award recipient
Where it started
A career that began in global finance.
I started out with UBS in the United States — rigorous training in how to read evidence, weigh risk, and make decisions with real consequences attached. Those habits still show up in every session I run.
But long before that, at fifteen, I had written down what I actually wanted my work to be: helping people solve real problems. Coming back to India to work with students wasn't a departure from my career. It was the point of it.
The work
Forty thousand students, one conversation at a time.
Sixteen years of sitting with students and their parents at the moment the decision actually gets made — in schools, in workshops, in rooms exactly like these.
I built Future Ready School to reach families I could never meet one at a time. The method hasn't changed since the first year: ask better questions, look at real evidence rather than reputation, and let the student own the decision.
Inside admissions
I've spent years on the other side of the desk.
Time with admissions officers at universities around the world — understanding how applications are actually read, what a committee argues about, and what makes a file memorable rather than merely strong.
That's the knowledge students in my programmes get. Not guesswork about what colleges might want, but a working understanding of how the decision gets made — and offers from the universities on the right.
How I work
Four principles behind every session.
If we work together, these are the assumptions underneath it.
01
The student decides
A career chosen to satisfy someone else rarely survives the first hard year. My job is to make the choice better informed — not to make it for anyone.
02
Evidence over reputation
What a course is known for and what it actually leads to are often different things. We look at outcomes, not brochures.
03
Parents are in the room
A plan rarely works when the student and the parents want different things and nobody says so out loud. That conversation happens early.
04
Early beats intense
A few clear decisions in Class 9 do more than a frantic Class 12. Most of what matters gets built slowly.
On stage
Two TEDx talks.
Both about the same thing from different angles: how young people decide who to become.
3 Simple Steps to Train Your Mind for Success
TEDxBVCOE — on mindset, and building a life that isn't merely ordinary.
In the media
Where the work has been covered.
