Brothers Viraj Sheth, Gitanj Sheth who scored 99 percentile.
While engineers, like every year, dominated the list of toppers who scored above 99 percentile in the Common Admission Test (CAT) results that were declared on Monday, none of the top 22 from Gujarat who will make their way to the prestigious B-schools of the country — the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) — is an IITian. And interestingly, a majority of them have done their schooling in Gujarati medium.
Moreover, at least four are from Patan, Bhavnagar and Valsad with modest backgrounds. Meet Agrawal (20) of Surat, who is in third year BCom and also pursuing Chartered Accountancy (CA), is among the top 20 students who has scored 100 percentile.
Son of a textile trader, Meet said: “When I was in school, teachers and my family used to call me a ‘wonder boy’ as I was very good in playing chess and table tennis. I have planned to complete my CA finals and with it, I will do my MBA from IIM-Ahmedabad. I want to start my own business and want to help my father in his business, too. The credit of my success definitely goes to the training I got from my tutors. My parents also supported me a lot.”
Three years ago, he had cleared Class XII CBSE exams from Surat with 97.2 percentage.
Among the three girls in the top 22 is Aditi Kavya, who scored 99.98 percentile, securing the top position from Ahmedabad from where nearly 3,000 candidates applied, this year. A final year student of chemical engineering from Nirma University in Ahmebadad, she aspires to venture into consultancy and is aiming to pursue management in finance. She is also associated with an NGO for the last three years that works in academic assistance to underprivileged students.
“I was expecting a good score, but 99.98 is an icing on the cake,” Aditi told The Indian Express. Her parents run a garment manufacturing unit in Ahmedabad. Brothers — Viraj Sheth (21) and Gitanj Sheth (22) — from Bhavnagar scored 99.95 and 99.86 percentile, respectively. Like their parents, both are engineers. While Viraj had just completed his B Tech in computer science in 2017 from Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology (DAIICT), Gandhinagar, the elder Gitanj completed mechanical engineer from Nirma University in 2016.
“Since our father has a wide foray of businesses, including construction, software development, consultancy, the experience he shared guided us throughout,” said Viraj who cracked CAT in his first attempt, while for Gitanj it was the second attempt. Studying in Gujarati medium, both said that it was initially difficult, but a regular reading habit helped them to sail through. “Once we were preparing for the MBA, we started reading English books and took dozens of mock tests. We have changed the belief that Gujarati-medium students cannot get into IIMs, and only the English-medium students have an edge,” Gitanj added.
Another engineer Jainam Shah from Patan cracked the CAT in the first attempt with 99.97 percentile. “In my second year of engineering, I realised that one could survive with technical skills, but after one point one needs managerial expertise too,” Jainam said, agreeing that schooling in non-English medium schools makes it difficult to clear the entrance exam. “But guidance and perseverance pays off,” he added.
In the first attempt last year, Rishabh Dagar had secured 99.1 percentile. But this year, he made it to the top bracket with 99.87 percentile. “I could not make it to IIMs last time because my engineering result was pending due to the supplementary exams that I had to take. I decided that since I have done engineering from an average college, I need to get to the IIMs to have better career options,” he said.
24-year old Dhwani Shah who secured 99.03 percentile is from Valsad. She completed her CA in 2016. “I realised that subject knowledge is not enough. To successfully run my father’s firm, I need to learn managerial skills as well. Thus, I pursued MBA,” she said.
“The mindset of children going into the family business is changing. Now parents want their children to get academic knowledge from prestigious institutes like the IIMs,” said Sawan Rathi, general manager at city’s MBA coaching centre.
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