“I used to think I was just a local star,” says Sujeet Gholap, a final year computer science student at IIT – Madras, talking about topping his school exams in Osmanabad in Maharashtra.
“I always thought people from cities would do much better than me. Besides I studied every subject in Marathi till Class X,” says the student, who hails from Kallam Taluka there.
Today, he is the star of the placement season at IIT- Madras, with literally every high-paying company fighting to recruit him. The offers Sujeet Gholap has managed to get from six leaders in the field is a record, say sources in the institute.
Sujeet has offers from Google, Microsoft, Samsung (India and International), Goldman Sachs and Tower Research, of which those from Samsung are the highest paying on the campus this year. “I did not expect any of this. I had applied to as many companies as possible, and after every interview, I thought I could have performed better,” he says. Even now he does not know the exact reasons why the companies, especially Google and Tower Research that selected just one candidate, chose him. “They kept asking me to solve problems, write code and I kept giving them the solutions. In these interviews, nothing else, even the attitude does not matter as long as you come out with the best code,” he says.
“What mattered the most is that I managed to stay enthusiastic even at midnight for the last interview, after 18 gruelling ones since 5 a.m.,” he says.
Sujeet has opted for Google. However, he does not plan to continue in the IT sector for long. “I have always wanted to be an IAS officer. I like systems to be in place, working properly,” he says.
