How do I compete with people who are smarter than me?

I got the privilege to study at IIT Bombay’s Computer Science and Engineering Department for my undergrad. It is arguably the most competitive course in Engineering. All the top JEE rankers join the course and so, it becomes extremely competitive.

I secured an All India Rank of 33 in JEE Advanced 2013 - definitely a dream for many. But guess what, I wasn’t even eligible for the American Express Internship because the cut-off was an All India Rank of 25. Not only that, I was not eligible for the Aditya Birla Scholarship because they shortlist only the top 20 JEE rankers from each IIT. For IIT Bombay, this was an All India Rank of 22 because AIR 4 and AIR 9 went to IIT Delhi.

Can you imagine, that there are things that I was not even eligible for, after securing an All India Rank of 33 in the toughest Engineering Exam in India?

In my year, IIT Bombay CSE closed at AIR 59. Approximately 1.4 million (14 lakhs) students appeared for JEE Main of which some 150k (1.5 lakhs) appeared for JEE Advanced. Of this, only the top 59 rankers were eligible to join IIT Bombay, Computer Science and Engineering. That’s how competitive it is.

Every other person is a topper of their respective coaching - Bansal Classes? Yes. Resonance? Yes. Vibrant? Yes. Allen? Yes. You name the coaching institute and the topper is there at either IITB CSE or IITB Electrical. To make matters worse, in my year, during my freshman year, the Electrical Department’s grading was coupled with the CS Department's grading. The Electrical Engineering Department of IIT Bombay closed at an AIR of some 109. This means that if you are a student at IITB CSE, you are directly competing with almost 70% of the top 100 JEE rankers. That’s how brutal it is.

When I joined IIT Bombay in 2013, I faced a lot of challenges. From day one, I was under pressure because of the extremely competitive environment. Some people won’t attend classes, you’d never see them studying, and still, they will top the class. Many knew programming from their school days. In the first year, many courses are related to Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics which are a part of the JEE syllabus so, it was extremely difficult to manage given that the top JEE rankers were already the best at these subjects.

I worked hard. Really really hard. I spent countless hours studying. My strategy was fairly simple - to compete with the people who are smarter than me, I put in the extra hours. People studied for 4 hours. I studied for 8 hours. Many people called me “maggu” (someone who always studies), but I was clear about my strategy. Most importantly, I had that self-realization that I was not as smart as many of the students here. I also maintained consistency in my academics and did not leave anything for 1 day before the exam. I attended all the lectures, made notes, attended the tutorial sessions, and read books.

End result?

I was ranked 8th in the institute out of some 850+ students, with a CGPA of 9.86/10.0. For my exceptional performance, I was an Institute Academic Award recipient from IIT Bombay which was a cash prize of Rs. 2,000 and an achievement for life. I was also ranked 2nd in the Computer Science Department of IIT Bombay. Here is a copy of my grade sheet:

Here is how you can interpret the grades:

• AA = 10 out of 10
• AB = 9 out of 10
• PP = Pass (a non-credit course)
• AP = 10 out of 10 and exceptional performance (top 2% in that course)

As you can see, I scored a 9 out of 10 in the Organic & Inorganic Chemistry and Biology Courses. In all other courses, I scored an AA or an AP. As you can see, I have also scored an AP grade in 5 of the courses, which was the highest in our batch. I had never scored 100/100 in Mathematics in any exam in my life, not even in school or board exams. I scored a 100/100 in the Differential Equations course, which was the first time in my life that I got a full score in maths.

I think what really helped me was that I kept working hard. I never worried about the competition. I just assessed the fact that people here are smarter than me and so I need to work hard. From there on, I didn’t look back and I made sure to spend double the hours that any other person is spending. I also utilized the weekends to spend time catching up on subjects where I was relatively weak. For instance, I found Linear Algebra to be quite difficult. So, over the weekends, I spent more time on it to understand concepts better and solve more problems.

Later during the third semester, we had the Data Structures and Algorithms course. It was one of the toughest courses that I have ever taken. Prof. Diwan is known to create question papers that have an extremely difficult set of problems. Throughout the semester, we had 4 exams in that course - 2 quizzes, 1 mid-sem, and 1 end-sem. Of the total 100 marks, I scored merely 27. Can you imagine? Just 27 out of 100. What’s worse was that the highest in the department was 81/100, exactly 3 times my score. I ended up getting a CC grade, which is 6 out of 10.

Needless to say, I was extremely disappointed and scoring so low was a major setback. I realized that if I don’t work on my Data Structures and Algorithms skills, I will struggle a lot later because almost all Software Engineering careers require a sound knowledge of that. I figured out that the course went a little fast and because of the excessive workload during the semester, I could not do justice to the course because I couldn’t give enough time to practice problems. So, I decided that I would use the 3 months of the summer after my second year to spend time practising a lot of problems and reading a lot of concepts.

During the second year summer, I was interning at TU Braunschweig. It was a research internship and I totally did not like it. To top it up, I had plans to spend time improving my Data Structures and Algorithms skills during this period. So I didn’t really focus on the research internship and spent almost all my time practising problems on SPOJ, Topcoder, Codechef, and Codeforces. My flatmate during the internship was a batchmate of mine from IIT Bombay. He was an ACM-ICPC World Finalist. It often took me 5 hours to come up with a solution to a problem which he was able to get in just 5 minutes, without picking up a pen and paper. You can imagine the kind of pressure I was under because of this major gap.

I consistently worked hard and did not give up. I was clear that I didn’t want to go into research and rather would want to get a fantastic internship during the third-year summer. So, I needed to prepare for that now else I will face huge challenges during the internship hiring season in the 5th semester.

It turned out to be a great decision and I got an offer from Tower Research Capital, arguably the best domestic internship offer across all IITs. Further, I got selected at Rubrik (US Office) for an internship worth a stipend of $8000 per month - the highest-paying internship offer. The Rubrik and the Tower Research interviews were some of the most difficult interviews involving most of the questions around Data Structures and Algorithms. Because I had practised a lot during the summer, I was able to solve almost all the questions easily.

Some of you might think that I was already at a benefit because of my being a part of IIT Bombay, CSE. Yes, that’s correct. But the point here to note is that during the campus internship and placement season, I was competing with other people who were all from IIT Bombay, CSE and so, I really didn’t have an unfair advantage over them. In fact, I had a disadvantage given that many of them were way smarter than me.

Fast forward to today (2022), I am the Founder of Cogno AI, where I lead a team of over 150 people, crores in revenue, and ~100 customers. My co-founder (now my wife) and I bootstrapped Cogno to this stage, owning about 97% of the company. Cogno was acquired in a multi-million dollar deal by Exotel. I still work hard. I have figured out the template to win over smart people - put in double the hours of effort.

Many people ask me - do you not get bored of working hard? I think I enjoy winning. I enjoy the work that I am doing and so, I am quite happy with the work and do not get bored. Some people enjoy travelling. Others enjoy cooking. Someone enjoys reading. I enjoy working hard - that’s how it is for me. I am proud of myself and the work I am doing. My parents and family members are proud of me and my achievements and so, I think that all of my hard work has paid off quite well. The best part is that I am merely 26 years old and totally financially free. So, I have a lot of time to enjoy and compensate for the sacrifices that I made so far because of spending that extra time on academics.

So, to all those who are depressed by seeing those smart people around you - beat them with your hard work. Remember - Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.

Set high goals for yourself and work on them. Do whatever it takes to work on them. Sacrifice everything that doesn’t align with your goal. Friends and Partying can always happen later. If you work hard during your 20s, you’ll be set for the rest of your life. Enjoy in your 20s and you’ll struggle for the rest of your life. It is easier to correct the course of a rocket when it is on the land than when it is already 10,000 kms away from its planned trajectory. The earlier, the better.

All the best!

Some of my other posts:

• Aman Goel's answer to What is the best way to look for off-campus placements for IIT students?
• What are some basic projects in machine learning?
• Advice for those students who learned nothing in their 4 years of college, but now wish to work at Google/Facebook
• How are people earning 55LPA/24 LPA at the age of 24-27? I am 23 years old. I earn only 24k per month working in an MNC. What should I do to get on par?
• What one should do to prepare for placements?
• How do I build a strong resume?
• What is the motivation of Aman Goel to study hard and score such a brilliant result in his academics?
• What is the best way to learn Python and Django?