This is a story of how a boy named Rajeev Dandotiya from a small indian village who scored

39% in his 12th class exam cleared IIT entrance and changed his life forever. This story is
straight lifted from our website (how IIT JEE made a small village boys life, who scored 39% in
12th board )


My name is Rajiv Dandotiya Dandu Bhai for friends. I am writing this article today from
Copenhagen, Denmark where I work as an Assistant General Manager in a drilling company
Maersk. This is the story of how I went from studying in a Govt. school in Rajasthan, sitting
under a tree to earning a PhD from a European University. This is a story about the IIT-JEE
how it taught me the meaning of Learning and thereby made me who I am today. And it is a
story of my Board Exams. But most importantly it is the story of how I achieved my dreams by
never giving up.




I did my schooling from Govt. schools in Samod and Dholpur in the state of Rajasthan. My
schools were barely one the teachers would hardly ever come. Many students would take
tuitions and just memorize lessons and somehow pass the exam. I was never able to bring
myself to do this. We never knew about engineering colleges or what it meant to really learn
something. After the close of every school year we would sell our books and buy some cricket
balls with the proceeds. That was what the value of learning was for us. Most schools in the
area were just like mine.

It is no surprise thus that I got poor marks in my school leaving Board exams 39% even
though even at this level I was 5th in a class of 60! I was given grace marks in Chemistry. I still
remember when I went to seek the blessings of my teachers after the Board Exams and
someone said pair to aise choo rahe hain jaise merit main number laye hon(translation its
not like you passed with ying colors!). One of the most disheartening things about my Board
exams was how students paying for private tuitions were favored in Practical Exams. I got half
as many marks as some of my friends for no reason other than this.

My school education left me disinterested in further education. We were also nancially
distressed. After passing out of 12th in 95 I started helping out my father in his factory. Times
were tough. It is very hard to run a small business in India and after a couple of years the
business closed down. Left with no other option I started exploring whether I could get
admission to any BSc. course but quickly found out that my Board exam numbers made me
ineligible for all of them. When I approached coaching classes to train myself for PET Rajasthan
they also turned me down for the same reason. Desperate I asked our bookseller if there
was any exam where my board exam results would not make me ineligible. He suggested
applying for the IIT-JEE. In what looks very funny in retrospect I asked him to give me the set
of books for this exam (just like we used to get one for every class in school). He gave me three
books M.L Khanna, Gupta & Gupta and O.P Agarwal. Thus began my journey to IIT.

In my school I had never really learnt English. This meant that I had to rst learn English to
read these books so I bought a Dictionary as well. While the JEE is available in languages like
Hindi it is very difcult to train for JEE using Hindi alone. And yet most students coming from
my background do not get English education. In spite of these problems I really started
enjoying my studies. I realized for the rst time what it meant to understand concepts and solve
problems using rst principles (and not by memorizing). I felt glad that I had not memorized
everything up during my school days. My mind was unpolluted like a fresh slate. Some
problems would take a day to solve but I liked that better than looking up the solution. I also
got access to some old coaching material from Brilliants and that was also a turning point for
me.
In the year 2000 I cleared the JEE screening. Some people had made fun of me earlier how
can a person who barely cleared the Board exam even think about going to IIT (in my native
tongue: PET main pass hone ki aukat nahin hai, chale hain IIT main pass hone)? But my
parents and elder brothers always stood behind me. I was able to clear the JEE screening this
year and this made me realize that I was on the right track. During this time my elder brother
was taken severely ill and my mother had to be at his bedside to take care of him. His sickness
made our nancial condition even worse but I kept preparing for the JEE while simultaneously
helping my father in his business and doing all the household work and cooking. It turned out
that the cooking skills I acquired then would help me during my education in Europe much later
in life.

In 2001 I reappeared for the JEE. Unfortunately because of a mistake in reading one of the
questions I lost a lot of marks and could only manage a rank of 3453 and could not get a seat
in IIT. But by now I knew I could clear the JEE with much better rank. My brother called me from
the hospital and encouraged me to re-apply. I had also become an expert in the JEE and I
knew that if nothing else I would be able to give Engineering coaching classes to other
students. I was also approached by a coaching institute in this regard. Even though I had not
gotten a seat in IIT so far the JEE had made me a far better student with good career
prospects.
In 2002 I took the JEE for the last time and this time I got a rank of 1758. I still remember the
counselling in IIT Bombay that year. I was desperately trying to hide my Board Exam results
hoping to not get rejected because of them. However my counsellor looked at them and was
not sure whether I could be admitted to IIT. After consulting his colleagues he let me be
admitted and I got admission to 5 year Dual Degree program in Industrial Engineering &
Management at IIT-Kharagpur.

The people who used to taunt me were all praise now. I had also left far behind so many
talented friends from my school days most of whom were now running small shops. By grace
of God my brother also got better. But I soon realized that the obstacles posed by my Board
exam numbers were not all over. During my Third Year in IIT I saw the job postings from well
known companies in India. And they had a minimum cutoff of 60% in Boards. I realized that I
would never be able to get these jobs. I also decided I want to be a real engineer and not just
do some boring IT job. Hence motivated and encouraged by my IIT batchmates Chintan and
Anish I applied and got internships at IIT Bombay and at RDSO (Indian Railways), Lucknow.
My project on the latter became the basis of my BTech & MTech project and I was awarded
the best project for the same by IIT Kharagpur.

While I had not expected to get any jobs graduating from IIT because of my Board results I
was surprised to get an offer from a company Force Motors at Pune. I was selected from 600
candidates and I had a special interview loop and offer from them where they directly admitted
me into the management cadre. However I felt like I could achieve even more with my life and
decided to get a PhD from Lulea University in Sweden one of the four Universities across US
and Europe that offered me a scholarship. Over here I nished my PhD in only 3.5 years. We
came up with a solution to a tricky problem in maintenance decision making and this solution
has helped achieve signicant cost savings in the Mining industry in Sweden. We were given an
award for the same by the Swedish Centre of Maintenance Management and I have been
elated by being able to use my engineering knowledge to solve problems in the real world.

Looking back the critical thinking developed while training for the JEE gave me the versatility
to work in domains as different as Railways, Aircrafts and Oil & Gas. I have also been
impressed by the focus on applying engineering to practical problems during my PhD program
in Europe something that we did not see as much in IIT (leave alone school).

Even after all these years my fondness for the JEE has remained. I have looked up the
current JEE papers for fun. And I have been sad to see the changed pattern. Objective
questions are much easier than subjective ones. After all the correct answer is lying just
before your eyes just waiting to be guessed. And I have wondered why has the JEE been
made objective only?
In the last few weeks there is a lot of discussion around IIT-JEE. What should be the format?
Should Board Exams play a role? Do people who clear JEE really become good engineers or
scientists? What happens to people who do not get through the JEE?
In my opinion Board Exams are equally or more elitist (as compared to JEE). How many of
our Board Exam toppers come from small villages like Samod? Getting admitted to DPS RK
Puram (to ace the Board Exams) may be harder than getting admitted to Bansal Classes (to
clear the JEE). While there are no easy answers to any of these questions I believe that
providing greater weightage to board exams will certainly not solve the problem of the JEE
becoming an exam for the elites. It may actually make it worse. At least the old format allowed
students like me to come up will the new format do the same?
Every year I go back to my old school back in my village and meet students there. My message
to them is always that you can do anything. You just need to have condence in yourself and the
perseverance to see your potential through. Just remember what doesnt kill us makes us
stronger.

P.S: the Story is compiled by Joydeep Sen Sarma, nd more about him here