Joshi Awarded Prestigious NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship
(INDIANAPOLIS, Ind.) - Carnegie Mellon University men's tennis senior Akshay Joshi has been selected to receive an NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship for excelling academically and athletically while showing leadership and commitment to the community. Twenty-one males and 21 females across all three NCAA divisions were chosen as recipients for spring sports.
Joshi is the first Carnegie Mellon men's tennis player to receive the scholarship and the 24th Tartan. Joshi's athletic career concluded in May when the Tartans played in the 2026 NCAA Division III Men's Tennis Championship, as they advanced to the third round.
A mechanical engineering major with a 4.00 grade point average who was recently named to Academic All-America® Men's Tennis Team as selected by the College Sports Communicators, Joshi will continue his academic pursuits at Stanford University where he'll study aeronautics. He is a four-time ITA Scholar Athlete and three-time College Sports Communicators Academic All-District honoree. He was recently awarded the Carnegie Mellon Athletics Citizenship Award for his outstanding work on the court, in the classroom, and with the university community. A three-year member of the Student-Athlete Advisory Council, Joshi was on the CMU Racing Team, a Jr. Cad Developer at Tech Mahindra, and a Starlink Product Engineering Intern and Propulsion Engineering Intern at SpaceX.
In addition to participating in tennis clinics and community cleanup projects with the tennis team, Joshi led the team as a three-year captain earning All-University Athletic Association (UAA) honors at second team doubles this year while also helping the team return to the NCAA Tournament and achieve a national ranking of five during the season. For his career, Joshi accumulated a record of 58-38 in doubles play and was named to the All-UAA team at number one doubles as a sophomore and number two doubles as a junior.
The NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship is awarded to student-athletes who excel academically and athletically, and are in their final year of intercollegiate athletics competition or have completed their athletic eligibility. The Association awards up to 126 postgraduate scholarships annually, 63 for men and 63 for women. This season's NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship recipients (21 men and 21 women) represent fall sports participants, who will receive a one-time, nonrenewable grant of $10,000 to be used for graduate study within one year of the award. Men's fall sports sponsored by the NCAA include cross country, football, soccer, and water polo, while women's fall sports are cross country, equestrian, field hockey, rugby, soccer, triathlon, and volleyball.
The NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship was created in 1964 to promote and encourage postgraduate education by rewarding the Association's most accomplished student-athletes through their participation in NCAA championship and/or emerging sports.