Hi,
My name is P. Nirupam Pratap Reddy. Most of them call me Nirupam. I am in my final year B.Tech.
I am a student of the 2001 B.Tech batch in IIIT. In this page I shall provide some details about my
primary, secondary education etc.

I was born in Hyderabad. The first six years of my education was in Nellore (AP). In Nellore I
studied my L.K.G in Modern High School. From U.K.G to 4th I studied in St. Joseph's High School
All through these 6 years I was the first in my class. In just one examination in those years I shared
my 1st place with another person. After this my dad was transferred to Rajahmundry(AP). I did my 5th
and 6th class here in Sri Gowthami Public School. Even here I was first in my class. Later we shifted
to Vishakapatnam. Here I studied from 7th to 9th in St. Francis De Sales (SFS) High School. Through these
3 years I was always in the 1st two positions in the class.My dad, was later transferred to Hyderabad. Here,
I joined St. Andrew's High School. But, here my position in the class dropped drastically and almost
my rank in the class varied from 1st to 5th in the class, but never below that. Finally I ended up with
a 85% (510 out of 600) in my 10th public examinations. This drop in my performance was basically due to
two reasons. One being the shift in my first language from Telugu (my favorite first language till 9th)
to Hindi in 10th class. Second being my preparation for getting into a IIT coaching center in the twin
cities called Ramaiah Coaching center.

Some notable achievements of mine in the 10th class were
1. Getting 16th rank in the perlims of NTSE from a total of 35,000 students.
(But I flopped in the National's because of my overconfidence and improper preparation)
2. Getting a consolation Certificate in Mathematics Olympiad (State Level)
3. Got 200 rank in APRJCET.

After my 10th I joined Ramaiah Coaching center for IIT coaching (I was one out of the 125 selected from a
total of 3500 students from the twin cities). I joined Ratna Junior College for intermediate classes.
My performance in Ramaiah was comparatively OK. It was here I started learning subjects in the real sense.
I really liked the way subjects were taught here. In those 2 years at Ramaiah I learnt a lot compared to what
I learnt any where else. I really have very great respect for all the lecturers at Ramaiah. But the only
problem with them is that they are a bit too harsh than required. Those two years were when I put all my
resources (physical and mental) into studies. I equally prepared well for IPE. I took French as my second
language. I used to like that subject very much. I finally secured 95.1% in IPE and scored 96% in French.
But as my badluck would have it, the year 2001 proved to be the most unlucky year for me. I could not
clear even one of the entrance examination I appeared for. I flopped at the JEE just because of one reason.
I always had this thought in my mind that I will not be able to clear JEE. So, when I took the maths paper
I could not even read what questions appeared in the paper for half an hour just because of my tension.
I started solving some questions after losing 1/2 hr of precious time. Then after coming out of the hall
I understood one thing that in my tension and nervousness I solved all of them wrong (That means a 0 in
the maths exam). I could not even sleep properly for two days after JEE results were announced. Because
of this major set back to me, my preformance in other competitive examinations was also affected. Finally
when I had digested all those bad preformances of mine and was settling down for a repetition, by God's
grace I got selected in IIIT in the second list.

By the time I joined IIIT, other relatives of mine used to tell me that till now in school you had no
competition and most probably no one in your school studied properly and so you managed to top every time
and you will not have such a chance in IIIT, as students here would be the best from all over India.
Truly the first year in IIIT was like hell. I had no prior programming experience and was not used to the
way in which professors teach. So, I worked for almost 10hrs a day just studying. But, even then the
people here were so good that I managed to end up 7th in my first semester and 20th in the second semester.
One additional reason for my bad performance was also because of the ragging which our seniors did. I was
so scared of them, that I used to regularly commute back home every day (30 Kms). So, I could not really
do much practice on C Programming.

But from the next year my preformance considerably improved with a SGPA of 10 in the 3rd semester. As on
today my CGPA is 9.3 as against a CGPA of 8.2 in my first semester.

I have been fortunate enough to get an oppurtunity to do winter internship in Georgia Tech for my final
year project. I will be completing my B.Tech Final year in another 5 months.


												That's it for now,
												Bye,
												Pratap.
												Jan 2, 2005