My Journey through CEs to getting the desired group!!

Hi all aspirants,
I had thought of sharing my experiences for you people, although I have been a very lazy and inactive member of the forum, but I have found this forum to be a very useful resource for CE preparation.

This all is my own personal experience and journey through CE and not in any way a final word about how you people plan to go about preparing for the exams. It is up to every individual’s own abilities and skill set.

I am a professional telecom engineer and have accumulated a work experience of about 7 and half years. Out of these for the last 4 years I have been trying to switch my career : D the point here is that I took all my attempts by either quitting my job or taking a leave from the jobs. So good news for people who are working and want to take the attempt, it is quite possible, if you prioritize and manage your preparation.

I took all of my three attempts for the competitive exams i.e. CE-2010, CE-2012 and finally got allocated in CE-2013.

I have a lot of things to say about my experience , no doubt it was hard, it was excruciatingly time consuming and it made me wait for like eternity to get where I wanted to , but Alhumdulilah all is well that ends well.

So for those of you who are new to the process , I would suggest you start ASAP, it takes quite some time to understand the procedure of exams, the type of exams, the subjects, the schedules, the problems you will face. The sooner you start exploring CE the sooner you will be able to settle down with your final choice of subjects and start the preparation.

I started preparing for CE-2010 in May,2009 ; joined a local CSS prep academy and quit it after 2 months of studying. I wanted to know about what kind of notes students have , what is being taught , how the system works and above all how much I needed to study to be at par or be better than the rest of the candidates.

Note: I have had a fair grip over English so I wasn’t really scared of it and thus I won’t be focusing much on how I prepared the essay and all, because I didn’t and it did cost me an attempt. I highly recommend not to ignore English essay or Composition. If you think you are weak, work hard, if you think you are good at it ,work harder, you are overestimating your abilities.

I quit my job in September in Lieu of preparations and wasted a couple of months , you know how marriages in the family eat up your time and then there is always a new favorite movie released as soon as you sit down to prep and when finally you are studying everything else in the world becomes more important, like how interesting an Ant looks when its tracking its way up the wall :s etc.

The point here is that I wasted a lot of time and took the exams and I thought I did ok , was unsure deep down inside. I cleared the CE-2010 but My interview was a disaster. I thought I would flunk it. Anyways the final result broke my heart 433 times , as that is where I landed on the merit list.

Surprisingly I did fair in interview got 178 marks and in written I got 615 with a 0 in Journalism: O!!! Yes a zero on the mark sheet, I got 29 but it doesn’t get into the aggregate because I flunked it. (Now the rules have changed, if you flunk an optional, you are considered as fail in the exams)

Disheartened and broken I distanced myself from the CE and the whole idea. But soon enough I had my wits back and started preparing slowly for CE-2012 for redemption. Well I took leave from office in Dec and studied all I possibly could in 2 months before CE-2012. The result showed that I scored better than before 658 marks!! But sadly in that attempt I flunked in Essay!! Got 37 marks!! I was devastated!!

I thought of forgetting whatever happened and getting on with life since I had a job and a career to look forward to so I tried getting over it. After some time with family and my elder brother (PSP), my mentor’s, support I started preparing for CE-13, took the exam and forgot about it. I thought i took the worst possible last attempt and there goes the redemption in the bin.

I was sure that I will clear the exams but knew that I will score low. Anyways in the final attempt I got through in all subjects finally and got a good score in interview that landed me in FSP !!

Some things I have learnt over the time and want to share with you people, consider it wisdom or words of advice in general as you already must know all the tips and tricks to cracking the exams given by seniors.

1. Remember that your first attempt will be your easiest and best chance to get through. Try your very best to nail it in the first attempt. As time passes you have obligations to your family to your parents, responsibilities add up on you, it gets harder to study as time passes.

2. Do not run after perfection in one topic when preparing, you are not supposed to write a thesis on a certain subject rather get through it and know enough about it to justify a 20 marks answer.

3. Manager your time. The more consistent your are with your schedule and persistent in achieving your set goals the easier it will get in the end as exams approach.

4. Overnight studies don’t work at all for CE. You might clear the exams but you won’t get allocated.

5. Every single hour you waste you should know that somewhere in this country someone out there is still studying and he has gone ahead of you by an hour !!

6. Try your best to concentrate on and understand topics and then do the cramming or whatever trick you have to memorize material.

7. Improve your written English Skills, grammar and spellings. You will need them if not more in at least 10-11 papers. And the better versed you are with the language the faster you can think and manage your exams.

8. Pray, pray for your success and for His mercy.

9. All said and done it is not the end of the world; I was ready for my plan B that was my Telecom Career.

10. Life doesn’t give you many chances , make the ones you have count !!

Bundle of thanks for letting us know about your true preparation and attempts, whether you got success or failed you posted honestly. As there always remains ambiguity in the minds of new comers regarding working hours required for preparation of Css or upto what extent a subject should be got through. Most of us are in habit of rather over or under-estimating ourselves. Especially when a student like me is living in a city like Sargodha and even cannot afford coaching in a academy in Lahore due to various factors and also due not have access to libraries. I do not know the preparation level of my competitors or in what way they prepare. I have made my first attempt in ce-2014 and hoping for the best. please tell me the ways for my personal evaluation. thank you very much.

work hard, work smart and stop thinking about how things will go or what will happen or how much time this whole process takes. Don't just start something, finish something. the best thing to do after taking exams is to forget about them

Its really impressive Escobar,kindly share your study plane and more tips which have really helpfull.
Regards and best wishes for you!

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