The Long Arithmetic of Success ft. Prashasti Sarraf
Success usually arrives in milestones: an examination cleared, a rank secured, a degree completed. For Prashasti Sarraf, it appears instead as a habit, repeated so consistently that individual achievements begin to lose their ability to surprise. CSE AIR 5. ISC AIR 7. St. Stephen’s College. IIT Madras BS Degree. Academic distinctions, TA roles, research initiatives…
Abroad from The Mathematical Airport – Sarath Sai
The passion for a subject is oftentimes the key to open doors to a broader world, and Sarath Sai knew exactly that. From being unable to take Aerospace Engineering due to eligibility criteria to falling back on a Bachelor’s Degree in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in his home-state of Andhra Pradesh at JNTU, he…
A Pamphlet, A Path: The Aathi Sankar Story
Most stories begin with a decision. This one began with a leaflet. Someone pressed it into Aathi Sankar’s hand outside a JEE Advanced examination centre. It looked no different from the dozens of flyers routinely distributed to students. But he kept it. He knew little of Data Science then, harboured no five-year blueprint, no smouldering…
A Story of Defense and Freedom – Prachi Trivedi
Everyone has felt the suffocation of being stuck in the cyclical routine of 9 to 5, how it clips one’s wings and relegates them to mindless tasks. Prachi Trivedi found herself at the edge of entering such a world and could only imagine the color that would be lost should she choose such a route….
From Questioning Systems to Building Them Better – Sayan Ghosh
The race of entrance examinations hypnotizes all into a rush of academic mania, however, Sayan Ghosh asked the question many omit. Why is it necessary for someone to hone their problem solving skills through Physics and Chemistry while pursuing Computer Science? With the allure of computer games and his fascination for the grandeur and social…
From Santragachi to Staggering Solutions: The Priyangshu Bala Story
In Sanskrit, there is a word “jijñāsā” , which lives on in Hindi and Bengali as “jigyāsā” and “jiggāśā” : a restless desire to know, a curiosity so deep that English has no perfect equivalent. Priyangshu Bala might not have used that word to describe himself when he enrolled in the IIT Madras BS Degree…
Chandan Kumar : The Teacher Who Went Back to School
Chandan Kumar spent years on the other side of the classroom – chalk in hand, explaining the elegance of Physics to students preparing to crack one of the world’s most gruelling entrance exams. His goal, every single day, was to get his students into an IIT. He knew the institution well, admired it from a…
Quenching the Thirst for More – Prahladh C
The monotonicity of college life, the hours of vacancy and a mind rushing with ideas is a cocktail for thirst; The thirst for more information, for knowledge and depth that Prahladh C sought in the comfortable afternoons after attending PMS college in Bangalore while pursuing AI and ML. Having missed the chance to attend high…
M. Nagrajan: The Man Who Refused the Post-Mortem Phase of Life
Forty years ago, Mr. M. Nagrajan sat at a desk without a monitor or a keyboard in sight. He was writing code not with a blinking cursor, but with a pen in a physical notebook. Lines of COBOL, Fortran, and Pascal were meticulously hand-inked, then mailed to a college in Madurai for evaluation. There was…
What Started as an Interest in Circuits Slowly Became Pratham’s Career Direction
For Pratham Tibrewal, choosing a career was never about following trends or chasing a popular branch. It began with a simple realization during his entrance preparation days – he genuinely enjoyed studying Electronics. That interest eventually led him to the IIT Madras BS Degree in Electronic Systems, one of the early batches of the program….
