Delhi boy tops UPSC ESE 2021 after cracking JEE Advanced, GATE

The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) recently released the final results of the Engineering Services Examination (ESE) 2021. Delhi’s Karthikay Kaushik topped in civil engineering to continue his success story of cracking almost all exams that are there for engineering students.

Prior to achieving AIR 1 in ESE 2021, the 24-year-old Kaushik had cracked JEE Mains (AIR 778), JEE Advanced (AIR 2945) and GATE 2020 (AIR 26).

After JEE Advanced, Kaushik studied BTech in civil engineering at IIT Roorkee in 2015. Later, thanks to his performance in Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE), he landed a job at the Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL). However, he quit that job to study ESE.

In ESE 2020, he progressed to the interview stage and scored 796/1300, but the final cut-off was 807. He had also qualified for the written round of BARC, in 2020 and 2021, and ISRO in 2020 but did not appear for interviews “due to unavoidable circumstances”, reported News18 website.

“I joined IOCL in January 2021 on the basis of my performance in GATE 2020. While in April 2021, the result of ESE 2020 was declared and I came to know that I missed the final cut-off by 11 marks. After this setback, I decided to leave my job at Indian Oil and prepare with a single-minded focus for ESE 2021,” Kaushik told the website.

He joined coaching platforms including Ace Engineering Institute to prepare for the exam.

“I realised that the syllabus of GATE is a subset of ESE. Therefore, my focus was to complete the whole syllabus of ESE first. In the second attempt, I gave more focus on general studies or paper 1 of the preliminary stage. For improving my score in the mains stage, I doubled the number of mock tests as compared to the first attempt. This really helped me to improve my answer writing speed,” he added.

ESE 2021 Topper ( AIR 1, Civil Engg.) Kartikay Kaushik( MADE EASY Classroom Student) in Topper’s talk pic.twitter.com/54mnxmTqzS

— B.Singh (@Cmd_Madeeasy) March 29, 2022

Kaushik explains that giving mock interviews helped him to clear ESE this time.

“I focused hard on the interview stage. In my first attempt, I did not give any mock interviews but this time, I gave three mock interviews which helped me to polish my personality and highlighted the technical areas where I was lacking. I also practiced in front of a mirror to observe myself in detail and improve my body language,” he said.

According to him, being an engineer at the officer level gives him “opportunities to contribute towards public welfare and nation-building.”