My Career Journey from High School to IIT
It was around early April in 2018. My ICSE 10th boards had just been over. I was admission to a local coaching institute in the capital city of my state, some 300 km from my hometown. The initial days were very daunting, being in a hostel for the very first time and the knowledge gap and difference in the syllabus and style of teaching were very clearly visible. Luckily, I had a very good school friend of mine and we stayed as roommates, so it eased both of us up a bit.
I was a week or two late in joining the classes, so I missed basic maths and other fundamentals. This made it especially difficult to get over the initial nerves. The teachers were super helpful, and I settled into the groove pretty soon. Coming from an ICSE background, I had already been taught the mole concept and stoichiometry, along with some topics like matrices and determinants. These made life easier. I found some topics like ionic equilibrium and rotational mechanics, especially difficult, but our teachers guided us through them. I tried KVPY in 11th but we had not covered the entire required syllabus and I couldn’t qualify.
In 12th, the teaching took pace and so did my understanding speed. It was a continuous grind of waking up early, studying previous class topics, attending classes, returning, and then studying the latest taught topics with computer-based tests on weekends followed by discussions with teachers. I qualified IAPT Olympiad in my 12th and reappeared for KVPY, though missed the cutoff by a not-so-small margin of 8 marks. Our syllabus was finished a few months before the first JEE Main. We were given ample time to just study by ourselves with the very able support of our teachers coming to hostel visits biweekly.
The January session of JEE Mains performance of mine was way below expectations. I was devastated, more because of my incredibly poor performance in Chemistry. My Chemistry teacher came to my rescue, he said there is no time to be disappointed and sad, get up, find your weaknesses, and work as hard as you can to compensate in the next session. That’s exactly what I did, this time I made sure to go through the entire NCERT textbook multiple times for both organic and inorganic chemistry. I also made sure that my physics and mathematics did not suffer due to decreased attention.
By this time covid hit, and I found myself at home. I used the internet to the best effect. Clarifying my doubts online and attempting Allen’s test series. Second attempt, I had improved scores in Chemistry, but the overall percentile remained more or less the same. I did not let this disappointment get to me and focused on Advanced. Most of my time during the quarantine was spent giving mock tests and analyzing rather than studying new topics. I was practicing what I had learned during the two years. In JEE Advanced, I scored almost equal in both the papers, and my marks in all the subjects were almost the same. The Advanced rank was very much better than my main rank, and I finally landed CSE at one of the old IITs.
My advice to all the students who are aspiring to clear the JEE is to be focused and genuinely enjoy what you are taught. The thing that I hold dear from this journey is not the result, but the moments I spent thinking about the problems and topics and the satisfaction when I conquered my weaknesses and my fears. To me, this was less about clearing one of the toughest examinations at this level and more about self discovery and temperament building. It moulded me into who I am today and taught me how to think for myself, how to not lose hope in the darkest of situations and how to keep heart and try with utmost sincerity and open mind. So, don’t worry about the result, whatever it maybe, think of these two years as being a transformational period and all that matters is how much you have changed for good at the end of it. The final result is just an added bonus. And then you will be forever thankful to it and yourself. You will have a new found belief in yourself and that I think is the most important thing you can ask for.