5 May 2012 14:37:36 IST
, Express India
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AIIMS alumnus, engineer from IIT top Civil Services
Engineering Entrance
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JEE Main
As many as 13 candidates from Delhi are among the top 25 who cleared the Civil Services Examination 2011 on Friday. AIIMS alumnus Dr Shena Aggarwal topped the examination, conducted by the Union Public Service Commission, in her third attempt while IIT electrical engineer Prince Dhawan ranked third in his first attempt.
And for the second straight year, the top two positions have been bagged by women. The second rank was secured by Rukmani Riar, a Master of Arts (Social Entrepreneurship) from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai.
Shena Aggarwal (25) was born and brought up in Yamunanagar in Haryana. She completed her MBBS at AIIMS in 2009. Daughter of a dentist, she topped the CBSE Pre Medical Test (PMT) in 2004 and is already training for the Indian Revenue Service(IRS) in Nagpur. In the 2010 Civil Services Examination, she ranked 305.
Aggarwal told Newsline she would use her background in medicine to change the face of public health as an administrator. “I am elated. I don’t think people expect to top the UPSC in their wildest dreams. The phone hasn’t stopped ringing. To be honest, the news is yet to sink in,” she said.
She attributes the jump to Rank 1 to diligent preparation in her chosen subjects — medicine and psychology. “When it comes to preparation for the UPSC, there can be no shortcut. Obviously, since I had taken the exam once before, I had a certain edge. There were no surprises this year,” she said.
“Though I was happy in the IRS, I wanted to clear the IAS. I knew I could work in managing the country’s healthcare problems properly, only in this area.” Despite her busy IRS training schedule in Nagpur, she dedicated 5-6 hours a day in preparing for the 2011 examination.
For 22-year-old Prince Dhawan, congratulatory phone calls after announcement of examination results, are not new. A gold medalist from IIT, he was the topper in the dual degree B.Tech and M. Tech course in electrical engineering in 2011, and was also declared the all-round best student of his batch.
Dhawan said that while there was no secret to how he cracked the examination in his first attempt, proper planning in studies contributed largely to his success.
“I started planning from the middle of 2009. I had short term plans, which were daily and weekly targets and long term plans where I would map out how much of the syllabus I would complete in 3-4 months or longer. I started studying for my second subject which was public administration much later, in May 2010. My first subject, electrical engineering, I was studying anyway. Other than that, I turned to newspapers for general knowledge,” he said.
Dispelling the myth of “all work and no play,” Dhawan was involved in extracurricular activities throughout his college life. “In college, I debated and taught juniors. In my final year, I became a teaching assistant at the IIT. I was also involved in a community service programme. I never gave up on any of these and, therefore, needed a plan of action for my studies,” he said.
Vriti Edustore
