A story of hard work

Over the last two years, Ram Ganesh spent many sleepless nights in pursuit of his engineering dreams.

His hard work paid rich dividends when Education Minister C. Raveendranath announced the results of the State engineering entrance exams on Monday. The teenager’s house on New Road at Statue Junction, Thripunithura, erupted in joy when he was adjudged the first rank holder. For a youngster who had just achieved a feat considered enormous in a State known for its obsession with engineering and medicine courses, Ram was calm and collected as television news channel crew crowded into his drawing room.

“I was confident of a very good score when the answer keys were published. But the top rank was kind of unexpected,” Ram told

The Hindu . Having set his preparations to a timetable for the last two years, success was never in doubt.

Not an early riser, Ram preferred to stay late into the night, focusing on getting thorough with various concepts. The preparations were mostly a solitary exercise, save a few combined sessions with friends.

With his eyes set on pursuing electrical engineering, Ram dreams of getting into either of his favoured Indian Institutes of Technology, in Chennai or Mumbai. Ranked 271 in the IIT Joint Entrance Exams, that dream seems not a distant one either.

Ram, who completed his Plus Two from Chinmaya Vidyalaya, Thripunithura, is the elder son of R. Venkiteswaran, deputy manager with FACT, and R. Roja, sub divisional engineer with BSNL.