I am Shashank Shekhar, AIR-1, Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering. I was passionate about ESE as it would give me better carrier growth and satisfaction. I would accredit my success to goddess Saraswati, my parents and my family friend Rakesh. I expected to see my name in the ESE list but I never expected myself to top this exam but dedication, discipline and studying from quality material helped me reach this pinnacle of success. I focused on one task at hand only, at a time. Before prelims, I took care of prelims preparation only. I had set my target for seven study hours per day. Dedication, discipline, keeping hope and committing 100 % to one’s goal are desirable attributes of any ESE aspirant. I prepared the GS part from the two green books of Made Easy that I had. I read current affairs from monthly Made Easy magazine. For Maths, I went for previous 20 year questions of GATE. I gave 40% of my preparation time to paper 1 and rest 60% to my technical subjects. My interview panel members were very polite. Respected chairman sir were very kind and made me feel comfortable. All the panel members were supportive. I got 50% questions from my technical part and rest were HR questions. Communication skills bag 40% importance in an interview and personality bags the rest 60%. Language is not a barrier in interview so any language can be used, however presentation skills matter a lot. I think final result is only 5% luck and mainly about hard work. I’d suggest all the candidates to trust themselves and commit 100% to their preparation. Find good and quality material to study and prepare.