From Nagachi, a remote village in this district, to Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A), N. Marisa Paranthahan has come a long way in pursuit of his dream, a Post Graduate programme in management.
Grown in rural background, Paranthahan, named after a medieval Chola empire, was baffled on being exposed to heavily accented English and the city culture when he joined College of Engineering, Anna University, Chennai, to take up engineering in Computer Science but he quickly gained his composure to cross hurdles and move ahead.
Rural-bred students making it big after getting into city colleges is as old as the hills and Paranthahan became one of them as he, after a brief stint in the Infosys, cracked the tough Common Admission Test (CAT) with an impressive aggregate of 99.8 percentile to get into the prestigious Institute.
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He is probably the first graduate to get into the business school from the district. He scored 97.61 percentile in quantitative ability and data interpretation and 99.86 percentile in verbal ability and logical reasoning.
The unassuming 25-year-old software engineer was busy preparing for next week’s preparatory session, when The Hindu contacted him for an informal chat on Wednesday night at his house here. A bright student, he was the district topper in Plus Two with 1132 marks in 2006.
After completing his engineering and joining Infosys, Paranthahan cleared GRE (330/340) and TOEFL (110/120), while waging a battle to crack the CAT. After working on the online test series, he made the maiden attempt in 2012 but shocked to see the pattern totally different.
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Unperturbed, he worked more vigorously to taste success. “I had absolutely no pressure when I took the examination last year. I was in the right frame of mind and it turned out to be my day,” he says with a cheerful smile.
He was obviously carefree as he had offer letters from four universities in the US, including the University of Washington for Master of Science degree when he appeared for CAT. His dream came true when he found himself eligible to get into IIM-A. “I had no passion for MBA but I was interested,” he says.
Things could change during the two-year course, but he could choose ‘consulting kind of business’ with his four years of experience in SAP, he says. After Plus two, he got a seat in the Madurai Medical College, but had opted for engineering.
“I have no regrets for not taking medicine,” he says. His father P.Natarajan, a senior advocate and mother N.Santhi supported him in all his endeavours and Paranthahan never disappointed them.