« 1A in ECE

I write this article knowing that there exist multiple blogs online on the same topic. I also write this article knowing that the heads up that I myself needed coming into ECE is missing in all those articles. This article is aimed to bridge that gap. The gap being: no Indian international student in ECE with a strong academic background in high school wrote blogs

First some background on my academics before 1A ECE

I am a student that prepared for entry into the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), and I say this not just to describe my academics but also since my preparation was and still remains a big part of my life. I prepared for IIT for four consecutive years after joining a coaching institute for the same

This preparation was intense. The daily routine (in 11th and 12th) was even more insane:

• woke up at 6
• went to school at 7:30 (4 out of 5 weekdays)
• returned at 2:30
• went to coaching class at 4
• spent about 4 hours learning
• returned around 9
• studied after returning from coaching class
• slept at 12 if not later

Over and above school days, summer vacations were spent 10am to 6pm at the coaching centre.

Due to this intense routine, class 11th and 12th was over like a breeze and I graduated CBSE with 95.4% among the best in my school.

As for IIT, things turned out a little different due to various reasons and I got around 4k rank in JEE mains and 8k in advanced.

Now let’s get to ECE

Not lying: it was a breeze. Barely went to classes, passed with flying colors. Let’s look at it course by course:

ECE150: I learnt C++ in CBSE, so programming in C++ was something I was comfortable in. -insert instructor approved answerer in this class This class was fun, getting challenged to cover all the test cases was a fun experience but getting this stamp of approval was better

ECE105: IIT preparation paid out its dividends here. As the class struggled to wrap their head around moment of inertia, I was acing the quizzes. This course is entirely mechanics and kinematics - to the level of JEE mains and maybe 5-8% harder but nothing like JEE advanced. My final grade is a reflection of my IIT preparation - although the course was insanely curved.

CHE102: In class participation is a pain, since you have to stay alert at the times of the lecture even if it is from home. But in the end I got a 100% provided the professor took best 14 lectures out of 16. As for the course: physical chemistry is all there is to it. The help session proved useful for this class though, since the last help session was basically the entire course revised.

MATH115: This was the course that I had to study for the most, although it’s still not much coming from me. Wrapping my head around eigen values, sub-spaces among others was a bit difficult but once I set out to finish the course syllabus, I was done in about 4 hours. I expected a little more in this course provided it’s not as high as I expected, but most of Indian friends have the same opinion so I think it might have been very strict correction to preserve the course average.

MATH117: This course only goes up to integration and volume of curves rotated about an axis in Calculus. If you’ve done CBSE level integration, then this course should be a breeze. Again though, I feel like I did worse in the course than expected but still better than all of my other Canadian friends