Beyond IIT

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It’s not as if you need to be an IITian in order to become an IAS officer or a CA. Praveen Tyagi tells you how there are options for students who have not scored well in their JEE exam

Getting through the JEE exam is not the end of the world, however, there are a lot of students who would think otherwise. Here, I will try to bring out some real-life instances that tell how that is not really the case.

In my life, as an IITian and entrepreneur, I have met more successful non-IITians than regular IITians. There are a couple of reasons to corroborate my claim here.

For one, going into an IIT really does not make you better in anything that you earlier weren’t. You will remain the same. Apart from of course getting a good brand name of IIT, you just get an additional, professional, technical knowledge, that too, a very good one.

Now, is getting a good technical knowledge, the only way to succeed in life and make money? I have seen highly successful, non-technical entrepreneurs running large corporations that employ a lot of technical people! It is their innate logical skills and aptitude that makes them successful. They have never been to IIT or even a business school (MBA). They are mostly simple graduates or post graduates (BSc, BCom, MSc, MCom, etc) who simply believe in themselves.

Apart from entrepreneurship, there are plenty of other professional routes one can choose. Becoming a CA is one. Some people think that to become a CA you need to have a commerce background, but that is really not the case. I have met a couple of engineers in my life who are CA’s also! There are just a couple of exams (CPT, IPCC and CA-Final) you need to clear, for which there is a prescribed syllabus. Most intelligent people do not find it very difficult to clear these even with a science background.

Getting a major in Economics is another route that you can take. I have seen lot of my peers join great international organisations like the UN, world bank, etc after getting major in economics from the London School of Economics. Some of them even end up getting majors in Economics and Statistics both.

That is a deadly combination of brain and brawn, which can be utilised in all industries and departments;  be it in insurance, healthcare, software, Government jobs, you name it and it could be possible. These are the guys who decide what the costs and prices of commodities and derivatives should be. They are the ones on which the stock exchanges rely on for currency and market rate analyses.

Actuarial science is another major area one could look at. With starting salaries in the range of more than Rs20 lakh per annum, it is a wanted profession. An actuarial is the person who creates and designs insurance policies, decides what the premiums are going to be, based on huge amounts of data obtained. You need to be an expert in statistics to do this. There is a series of seven tough examinations you need to pass before you can be an actuarial.

Some people aspire to get a Government job and become an IAS. You do not need to be an IITian in order to become one. A simple graduation is all that is required. You must be great in communication, do a thorough review of current affairs and be good in your subject area. There is plenty of good tutoring available for this too.

So do not lose heart if you could not make it through JEE, there are loads of other opportunities waiting for you.

The writer is VP academics, Meritnation.com.

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