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Mathematics gave me confidence. But it couldn’t do the miracle I was hoping for because chemistry was not on my side on the days that mattered the most – JEE Main and JEE Advance exams. My hope of getting into an IIT crashed on the day the results came. I felt small again in our small abode in Indore.

But my parents never stopped believing in me, especially my mother, who is a math teacher. It was because of her persistent efforts that I developed an interest in mathematics from a very early age. And it was she who made me believe that hard work never fails.

Thankfully, my JEE Main score was good enough to get me 100 per cent scholarship at JKLU. But at the time of admission, I hardly had any idea that JKLU could one day open the gates of an IIT for me one day.

The day I came to know that my university offers a semester study programme with IITs, I felt alive again and decided to take another shot at reliving a dream that I thought died a premature death. And finally, the day came when I received a letter from IIT Jodhpur, allowing me to study a full semester there. That day I realised that my mother was right: hard work never fails.

I decided to work even harder after entering the majestic IIT Jodhpur campus. When the faculty of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning wanted us to do one project, I did four and earned praise for all.

It was because of these projects that I was selected for an internship at Launched Global where I built models to predict job applicants' expected CTC (salary) based on application data -- a real-world HR analytics challenge.

Today, with above 8 CGPA, full scholarship at JKLU and another internship at Unlox, I look back with pride. And what has helped me the most on this journey so far is my love for mathematics and, of course, my mother.

— Sarthak Pandit, B.Tech Computer Science (2023-27)