'Whatever you do, will be right': How a mother's advice helped a house painter's son achieved IIT JEE dream despite many financial challenges

Nothing is impossible with perseverance. Sagar, the son of a house painter cracked IIT JEE Advanced through sheer power of persistence. In an interview with the Indian Express, Sagar shared how he handled the challenges of shifting from an Hindi medium to English medium schooling and how he was at a time, bogged down by uncertainties while preparing for such a competitive exam. However, he finally proved that nothing is impossible for the determined.

Today, Sagar, who is the son of a house painter and a tailor has cracked JEE Advanced and is preparing for the next stage of admissions to one of the prestigious IITs.

Sagar hails from Uttar Pradesh and revealed he once struggled with understanding English. “I did not understand English till class 6..” he revealed.


The first academic milestone he cleared was when he cleared the National Means-cum-Merit Scholarship (NMMS) examination in class eight, he received a scholarship pf Rs 12,000 yearly. This money helped him to continue his education.

He began his JEE preparation from class 11. He got enrolled in PhysicsWallah coaching classes and studied for eight hours a day.

He revealed that while subjects such as Physics and Chemistry were relatively easy for him, Mathematics proved to be more challenging.

“I took my time when attempting chapters in Maths so that I could understand it better. One has to work hard for Maths,” he explained.

He also admitted that he almost gave up hope while preparing for JEE examinations. Self-doubt hit him particularly hard when his mock test results did not yield good scores. One time, he almost decided to consider his fall-back option sit for Merchant Navy exams. The only thing that kept him going was his mother’s advice to keep studying.

Sagar’s perseverance has ultimately paid off and today, he has sailed through one of the toughest entrance exams of India and came out with flying colours.