Kaavya Vishwanathan (edit name/settings)

Kaavya Viswanathan was born in Chennai (formerly Madras) in India and spent her early childhood in the United Kingdom, moving with her parents to the United States when she was in middle school. Her father Viswanathan Rajaraman is a neurosurgeon, and her mother Mary Sundaram is a physician who gave up practicing to raise their daughter. As is sometimes customary among South Indians, Viswanathan took her father's first name as her last name. Intending ultimately to apply to Ivy League universities, Viswanathan participated in an assortment of enrichment programs and extracurricular activities, including summers at the Center for Talented Youth, a Johns Hopkins University program for gifted children, as well as serving as editor in chief of her school newspaper and taking advanced placement courses at her magnet high school, Bergen County Academies in Hackensack, New Jersey.