Cheated in IIT JEE and became IITian

When the question arises of future of new generation then they can do anything to secure it,

This story is of an IITian, who remained anonymous:
I’ll be writing down exactly what happened. Whether to believe or not is your decision. I am doing this for myself, not for you or your question or your belief.

Honestly, I did not go in the exam center with the intention of doing what I did nor did I have even the faintest idea what I was gonna do. If anything, before going in I talked to my dad and told him to expect a score in the negatives. Let’s just say, there was a lot riding on the stakes of my selection. I won’t say more.

So I went in, sat down, and saw that there were 8 people around me in different angles. Since I had gone in early, I had the chance to observe each and every one of them come and take their respective places or talk to an acquaintance though that was rare. One boy, he struck out completely different to me. In his manner, in his behavior, he was what you’d call a typical IITan. They distributed the papers and I found out there were ten sets. Since they were distributing in a zig-zag yet fixed pattern, I figured that if my set was 4th then my neighbor’s must be sixth. Exam started, I stared at my paper and sighted out how many questions I knew for sure. Very few to be honest. Then I stared at that boy’s QP, found the question with the exact design/shape and saw in his booklet the answer he had marked. I also observed other questions in his booklet and found thme out in mine. Took me about an hour but with the data of 4 out of 8 questions in the Part 1 and 3 out of 4 in the multiple answer type, I found out the algorithm in which the questions had been jumbled. All that remained was to look at his OMR sheet. Now that was the harder part, since they are colored in a way to confuse the human eye and not to mention in a room of 40 there were 4 invigilators + 1 guest invigilator with prying eyes whom I had to avoid at all cost. I looked at the answers, applied the algorithms I had derived and simply marked my own questions according to that. There were 2 papers both with PCM and each subject with 4 Parts each. All algorithms, to my surprise and delight, were different. After the first one though it did not take me much time to figure out the others.

Both papers went like this, and I remember that by the time I came out and reached where my mom’s car was parked, I had fainted. The mental exhaustion, was immense. Not to mention the straining eyes from the side way glances. I remember waking up to towels of water over my head and limbu-pani spoonfuls being poured down to my throat.

Presently, I am an IITan from one of the top 6 IITs and had a JEE AIR within the top 3500. I am a typical 5 pointer, though I do believe that that is by choice having seen the difficulty level here and the efforts put by the 9-10 pointers. Whether I deserve to be here or not, I don’t know. I’ve often wondered along these lines, thinking whether I’ve done right in denying someone who worked hard for 2 long years to be where I am. However what I do know is this, it may not have been right or wrong for me to take this seat, but I definitely do have the right to be where I am. There are multiple ways of doing something. Some follow the taken path, others, like myself, tread the lesser traveled. Nothing is right, nothing is wrong, it is all but a matter of perspective. The few that do know this are divided on this too. While the majority think I am some kind of a genius, which is also owing to my other activities in which I particularly excel on some of the biggest stages in the country, others think that I am neither a creator nor a genius, all I am is what others have made me. Frankly, it does not concern me.

I am here, I am happy and I have achieved wonderful insights of life after this experience. That, and friendship and a good 4 years is all I wish to take out of this place.