Fighting language as a barrier, four Gujarati-board students have scored above 99 percentile in the Common Admission Test (CAT), which is a gateway to the IIM's across the country. Unhappy with previous attempts of taking the exam, all four students Vijay Bandhiya, Bhautik Patel, Darshak Lodhiya and Gitanj Sheth took a year to focus and strengthen their vocabulary to ensure they get into one of the IIM's this time.
More than 35 students from the state scored over 99 percentile. However, the percentage of girls scoring the same result was low as compared to previous years.
Sectional 100 percentile scorer:
Interestingly, Darshak who scored 99.97 percentile has also topped the state in sectional percentile. He scored 100 percentile in the quantitative section. Scoring very low in previous two attempts, Darshak ensured that he improved his score in the verbal ability section.
Darshank, who hails from Junagadh, said: "Being an engineer, my quantitative ability was very strong but I was very weak in verbal ability section. In 2017, my verbal ability score was 52 percentile which this year is 96.5 percentile. I still face a huge challenge in terms of interviews and group discussion. I strengthened my verbal skills by reading all sorts of books, one per week."
For Vijay, studying in a Gujarati medium, was not out of choice. Son of an English professor at a city college, Vijay said, "I belong to a farmers family. My father had many people to take care of and, hence would take tuitions after college. Since he did not have time to teach me, he admitted me into a Gujarati medium school as it would be comfortable for my mother to help me. Last year, I scored 92.31 percentile, worked extensively on my English and this year, scored 99.48 percentile." Vijay has studied mechanical engineering from PDPU.
Bhautik missed 99 percentile by a whisker last year. After he scored 97.85 percentile last year, he focussed only on reading and finished 40 books in one year and scored 99.12 percentile."
Nirma Uni girl scores 99.64 percentile:
Twenty one-year-old Shreya Banssal scored 99.64 percentile in her first attempt. She believes that having a strong peer group helped her ace this test.
National badminton player, scores 99.68 percentile:
National badminton player Viraj Singh Bathwar scored 99.68 percentile. Belonging to Mithapur, Viraj studied engineering at DAIICT and took the test in 2016 only to realize that he needed to have work experience. After scoring 93.81 percentile then, he worked as a digital marketing executive with the Government of Andhra Pradesh for a year before preparing for the test again.
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