Serial toppers

“To be honest, I wrote some of the papers only to get a room in the hostel again,” confesses Aniket Mishra, 25, an MPhil in comparative Indian literature, who has consistently topped his exams at Delhi University (DU). Mishra, whose primary love is sports research, has also attempted and aced a variety of other competitive exams. He scored 760 out of 800 in his Graduate Management Admission Tests (GMAT), for instance, and ranked among the top 10 in the DU Law entrance exams the three times he appeared (“because of peer pressure”). He also did exceedingly well in the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) in 2009.

“I’ve never seriously considered a career in law or management... It’s kind of embarrassing,” says Mishra, “but I enjoy the thrill of writing these papers, especially the objective tests. Besides, being an avid quizzer, such exams help when I’m participating in or conducting a quiz,” he says.

Mishra, however, is not the only queer fish in the pond. Toppers in various competitive exams reappear for tests every year, without any intention whatsoever of joining an educational institution. “I know it sounds funny, but for some reason, doing well in exams gives me orgasmic pleasure, makes me ecstatic,” says Vijay Jha, senior vice-president at Career Launcher, one of the largest chains of coaching centres in the country. Jha wrote the Common Admission Test (CAT) for the first time in 1999, and started getting calls from management institutes soon after. But unlike most others, he decided to prepare better and reappear for the exam rather than pursue a degree right away.

“It was never my thing — management. But the calls made me realise that if I can do well enough without any preparation, surely I’ll do better if I am prepared,” says Jha, who has rarely skipped the annual tests since. Growing within the ranks of Career Launcher, he discovered that teaching management aspirants is more his calling. As is taking the CAT. Barring a couple of times, Jha has remained in the top one percentile and hopes to stay there. “It’s important for me to write these exams because our business is training students to do well in them. If we don’t keep track of the changing patterns of the paper,” says Jha, “we won’t be able to guide them properly either. Also, I have to admit, it’s great fun to take the test every year. I almost look forward to it.”

Last year’s national topper, 34-year-old Rajesh Balasubramanian runs 2IIM, a CAT coaching centre in Chennai, and he too takes the exam to keep a tab on the papers. “We create all our products — mock tests, sample papers, guides, etc. So I definitely want to know what the paper is like each year. And sure, it doesn’t hurt when one of us [at 2IIM] gets high percentiles as well,” says Balasubramanian, an alumnus of IIT, Chennai, and IIM, Bangalore.

Giving up a career in marketing and management at top corporations to set up his venture, Balasubramanian has appeared for the CAT seven consecutive years, scoring 99.85 per cent or above the last four times. He says, “The most important thing is to relax and write the exam. It’s also an opportunity to max yourself out for two hours, and get an adrenalin rush.” But what about the tedium of taking a largely similar test year after year? “I’m not bored per se, but I have to admit it’s not as thrilling as it used to be,” concedes Balasubramanian. Not that that deters him, of course, for the success and reputation of his business appear to rely heavily on such consistency.

Yet another CAT coach, Patrick D’Souza, 38, from Mumbai scored 99.8 per cent or more in all 10 attempts.

“When you go through what the students go through, it’s easier to teach them,” says D’Souza, who runs the Quoin academy in Dadar and Thane with his wife, and trains up to 50 students in each batch. “Unlike my students, there’s no threat of a setback in my career or any real pressure, so it’s easier to do well. It’s this pressure ‘to do well’ that gets most people down,” says this veteran CAT-taker. A crucial, if obvious, lesson for aspirants who must crack the code but once.