My journey to IIT

An unabridged version…

Never heard of it?

Since the boom of the software industry in India, and a handful of students getting a 8 figure salary (interesting plot twist here), it has always been the dream of every parent to have their kid enrolled into the best engineering college of India — IIT.

IIT stands for Indian Institute of Technology.

IITs are premier institutes in India for the field of engineering and IIT-JEE is the examination conducted on an annual basis that you’ll have to qualify in order to get admissions into these institutes.

A very small acceptance ratio ( a meager 0.7%) coupled with high difficulty of the exam makes it one of the toughest examinations on earth.

My first attempt — Beginning of the IIT journey

Contrary to what I told about dreams earlier, I was actually inclined towards Mathematics and thus I ended up taking the Science stream — Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics in 11th standard in one of the most reputed schools of my state. To be honest, in 11th standard, my goal of getting into IIT was not very strong and back then whatever my school was teaching was not enough to get me through the upcoming JEE exam. I lost one precious year in my 11th standard learning pretty much nothing. Luckily in 12th standard, the curriculum was updated which put JEE in focus. By the end of my 12th standard, I was pretty much determined to get into IIT. I had worked really hard and had a lot of expectations.

That year, even though I had passed the exam and had my name in the merit list, I failed to get a good rank which made me immediately realize that my efforts in Physics and Chemistry were not up to the mark.

The crucial decision

My rank in the first attempt would not get me a seat in any of the IITs unfortunately. My only mediocre achievement was that I had passed the exam and probably this put me in a tough spot. Had I not been in the merit list, I would have lost hope and accepted the fact that maybe I was not good enough, but my name in the merit list meant that maybe if I pushed a little harder, I would be able to make it through.

This is where having a person who has faith in you comes in handy. My brother suggested me to take a drop. After giving a good thought, I decided to take the advice. I finalized a reputed coaching center in Hyderabad for the drop year which was also near my hometown.

A second try — How I approached my drop year and probably you should too

Since the drop year was my last attempt to get in IIT, I became far more serious this time. A negative side of being a dropper is that you are likely to get stressed out by the fact that the drop attempt is going to be your last. Other than IIT, there are many career options available. Having an “IIT is not the end of life” attitude helps especially as the date of exam approaches closer. Droppers also have a positive side relative to the regular students. Having gone through the entire syllabus once during their 11th and 12th standards, they are much aware about their strong and weak areas.

A dropper should make his/her the highest priority to strengthen the weaker areas and then move to the already stronger areas. The teachers at the coaching made sure I followed this mantra strictly.

At the same time it is important to inculcate more self-discipline since it is more likely to lose track of your life when you are on your own away from home for the first time. A possible way and probably the only way to do this is, is by enjoying the subjects. It’s fine if you don’t have a liking for them initially but I would really suggest you to spend more time on the topics (especially the weaker ones) because more the time spent, more are the chances of getting good at them. Once you get better at something, you’ll automatically start taking more interest in them (This is how the human mind works — positive reinforcement). Studying with interest results in better preparation in terms of both quality and quantity.

I just ensured that I was honest towards my efforts and never really cared too much about the results.

Such efforts instill real confidence which is required if you want to crack the exam with a good rank.

Climax

So the result I was waiting for was finally out. And I don’t wish to make it sound like a big deal but I got a 3 digit rank and got myself enrolled in one of the top 5 IITs in the branch of my linking. It felt really great to have finally achieved something I had worked for this hard, this long.

You may be an average student, you may be a genius, you may be pretty much anything, but the take away from this article is that failing once is not the end. If you have a strong belief that you still haven't given your 100%, go for it again. But if you are doing it just for the sake of doing it, then please do yourself some justice and switch to something you actually like doing. High paying jobs and a hot wife is a myth, the grind is real. The only thing I’ll admit is, if you work hard earlier, you may not have to work as hard later on.

Before making IIT your dream destination, I would really want you to watch this (the guy in the video is not me ;-p) and think things through.

“Your time is limited. Don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” — Steve Jobs