“Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty, and persistence”
This statement aptly describes my journey from engineering to getting placed in TCS to joining our very own college VGSoM. But before narrowing down to the above statement, let me introduce myself. I am Rishav Raj, born and brought up in a small town Gaya located in the southern part of Bihar. I have completed my engineering from CUSAT, Kochi. I appeared in CAT for the first time in 2016 and managed 94.61 %ile fetching calls from IMT, XIMB, IIT Kharagpur and, IIT Kanpur.
It was June’16 when I returned from my office sweating under the scorching heat in Hyderabad and as usual, my room partner sitting on the couch (actually on the bench in TCS) was browsing through the notification about CAT registrations. Ignoring him, I moved forward with my usual chores. Little did I know, what my future held for me.
Cut to 17
th July, 2016. It was the day for appraisals and performance review in our project. I was sitting in my manager’s office for a one on one meeting and was asked if I had any concerns with my band which was announced early morning, and mine was a ‘C’. I nodded to him with a sense of grief.
Next few weeks, were a bit uneasy for me as I had a monotonous job under the support section solving consumer tickets and had no such skills (either core or non-core coding skills) to switch for a better one. I could see myself stuck under this vicious circle. I was anxious about my future with a lot of ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’. My very next thought went to my friend sitting on the couch pondering over the notification about CAT registrations. CAT was just 4 months away from then, and I was not sure if I could accumulate myself to have an attempt at it this year. But, with future not looking as secured, my anxiety grew and hence I registered for CAT’16 on the very same day.
Appearing for the very first time, I had very less time to prepare and hence I didn’t join any coaching institute. Quite determined now, I started preparing on my own. Next few months, my focus shifted from tickets to reading about CAT and solving RC’s and Quants. And throughout my preparation phase, I met people saying cracking CAT is not a layman’s job, you need a proper coaching and direction for it. Not one but my roommate knows how many nights we had been studying and paving our way through the Quantitative and Verbal reasoning.
On 10
th January 2016, sitting in my cubicle struggling through the consumer tickets, I received an SMS on my cell phone, stating that my CAT percentile is 94.61. Now that wasn’t a very good score, but it was almost enough to pull me out through my job life crisis.
A few days later, I received calls from various institutes. The interviews went pretty well and after a long wait, I converted almost all my calls including IIT Kharagpur. I joined VGSoM earlier this month on 14
th and met all my jovial and talented batch mates with whom I had interacted with, on the WhatsApp groups.
I am further thankful to my seniors for refining our WAT and PI skills by providing us individual mentors. I don’t know if it was my roommates effort, my Mom’s prayers, my dad’s belief or some supernatural force which pushed me through.
Finally, I can say ‘Come what may, whatever you do, whatever people say, do not stop believing. Believe in yourself’. All the best!!