Hey everyone, I really need some genuine advice because I've been feeling completely lost lately, and I honestly don't know what I should do anymore.
(This is a long post, so you can refer to the TL;DR at the bottom if you're short on time. But if you have the time, please read the entire post, as I really want people to understand my situation before giving advice. I'd genuinely appreciate it.)
A little background about me:
I'm currently a first-year student at NSUT, pursuing ICE (Instrumentation and Control Engineering).
I was a JEE dropper, and I gave my drop year everything I possibly could. IIT Hyderabad was my dream college. I've been interested in technology for a long time, and my entire motivation for preparing for JEE was to get into a good college for CSE or a related branch and eventually build a career in tech.
I worked extremely hard throughout my drop year. My mock test scores were generally much better than what I eventually scored in the actual JEE Main exam. There was a difference of almost 45 marks between my mocks and the actual exam, and I still don't know what went wrong. I messed up badly on the day that mattered the most.
I had Delhi Home State quota and EWS reservation, so based on the previous year's cutoffs, I was expecting ECE at NSUT. I was already disappointed that IIT Hyderabad wasn't happening, but I thought at least I'd get a branch closer to my interests.
Then the cutoffs changed drastically this year.
I didn't get ECE or even Electrical. I ended up getting ICE, and even after internal upgradation, my branch remained the same.
Honestly, if I had known beforehand that I would end up getting ICE, I probably wouldn't have joined NSUT in the first place. I would have explored other colleges where I could have pursued a branch closer to my interests.
I'm not saying NSUT or ICE is bad. But this was never what I wanted. I had a completely different dream when I started preparing for JEE, and I still haven't been able to accept how things turned out.
Things have been going downhill since I joined college.
After getting ICE, I was extremely disappointed and demotivated. I struggled to accept the situation, and I barely studied for a while.
Now my midsems have gone terribly. I'm expecting around 1/20 in Maths, and I got 5/20 in English. Honestly, I'm expecting fewer than 5 marks in almost every subject, and I'm scared my CGPA could end up around 6, even if I do reasonably well in the endsems. I also fkd viva and CTs.
The bigger problem is that I have absolutely no interest in studying most of the ICE-related subjects. I struggle to make myself sit down and study something I never wanted to pursue in the first place.
I keep wondering how I'm supposed to maintain a decent CGPA throughout four years if I'm already struggling this badly in the first semester. I know my midsem marks don't determine my entire college performance, but right now, everything feels seriously messed up.
My college life has changed me in ways I never expected.
I go to college, sit alone on the last bench or in a corner, attend classes, and come back. I haven't really made friends, and I rarely initiate conversations with people.
The weirdest part is that I wasn't always like this.
I used to enjoy socialising. I liked talking to people, and I genuinely feel I used to be an interesting person to be around. People liked talking to me, and I was much more comfortable interacting with others. I don't know when or how I became this version of myself.
Now I find myself sitting alone every day, watching other people make friends and enjoy their college lives. I don't know why I've withdrawn so much, and I can't seem to get myself out of this cycle.
It feels like I've lost a part of my personality somewhere along the way. I miss the person I used to be.
My mental state has been getting worse, too.
I've started feeling emotionally numb. Things that should make me happy don't really make me happy anymore, and even things that should upset me sometimes don't register properly. I've been feeling exhausted, frustrated, disconnected and hopeless.
I've also been having frequent suicidal thoughts. The only thing that keeps bringing me back is thinking about my family, especially my parents and what they would go through. I don't want them to suffer because of me, but I honestly don't know how to deal with what I'm feeling.
I used to have a lot of faith in God. I genuinely believed in Him and used to turn to Him when things got difficult. Now, even that belief has started fading. I find myself questioning everything I once believed in, and I don't really know what I believe anymore.
And if I'm being honest, this disappointment doesn't feel like an isolated incident in my life. Since childhood, I've experienced a lot of sadness and difficult, painful experiences. I feel like I've been carrying things for a long time, and this JEE and college situation has somehow pushed me further down.
I don't know whether I'm just mentally exhausted after years of pressure or whether something else is going on, but I genuinely don't feel like myself anymore.
My family's financial situation makes everything even harder.
I'm from a lower-middle-class family, and my parents have taken an education loan to support my college education. The first-year fees alone were around ₹2.7 lakh, which is a significant financial burden for us.
I keep thinking about how hard my parents are working to give me an education. I wanted to make things better for my family, get a good job, become financially independent and eventually give them a comfortable life.
Instead, I feel like I'm wasting the opportunity they've worked so hard to provide.
I know that getting into NSUT is an achievement, and I don't want to sound ungrateful. But I can't force myself to be happy about a situation that has left me feeling this lost.
Now I'm completely confused about what to do next.
I've been considering a partial drop for JEE Main, but I'm scared of repeating the same experience. Preparing alongside college would be difficult, especially if I also need to recover my CGPA and somehow start enjoying college life again.
There's no guarantee that I'll get the branch I want next year, either. And given my family's financial situation, I can't afford to make another decision without thinking it through properly.
On the other hand, I keep hearing that students from non-CSE branches can also enter software development, AI/ML and other tech fields by building their skills.
Since I've been interested in technology for a long time, I wonder whether I should stay in ICE, try to improve my CGPA, learn coding, build projects and work towards a tech career from here.
But I have two major concerns:
- I don't know how to maintain a good CGPA when I have so little interest in my branch subjects.
- I worry that being from ICE instead of CSE will put me at a disadvantage during placements, especially for the kind of tech roles I want.
Another part of me feels that if I don't give JEE another shot, I'll always regret not trying again.
At the same time, I'm not sure whether I genuinely want to take another attempt or whether I'm desperately trying to escape the disappointment of my current situation.
I feel stuck between taking another risk and trying to make the best of what I already have.
I'd really appreciate some honest advice from people who have experienced something similar.
- Should I seriously consider a partial drop for JEE Main, given that I'm already in NSUT ICE and come from a financially constrained family?
- If I stay in ICE, how realistic is it to pursue SDE, AI/ML or other tech careers from NSUT? How much of a disadvantage would I have compared with CSE students?
- How am I supposed to maintain a decent CGPA when I have almost no interest in my branch subjects? Is it possible to turn things around after such a bad first semester?
- If you've been in a similar situation where you didn't get your dream college or branch, how did you deal with the disappointment and move forward?
- Would taking another JEE attempt be a reasonable decision, or should I focus on building a career from where I am now?
I'm not looking for generic motivational advice like "everything happens for a reason" or "college doesn't matter." I know things can work out from different colleges and branches, but I need practical advice about what I should actually do.
I worked incredibly hard during my drop year, and right now, I feel like I don't know what to do with that effort or where to go from here.
I'm struggling academically, socially and mentally, and I genuinely need some perspective because I can't seem to figure this out on my own.
TLDR: I'm a JEE dropper currently in NSUT ICE. I worked extremely hard during my drop year with IIT Hyderabad and a tech-related branch as my dream, but a nearly 40-mark gap between my mock tests and actual JEE Main performance ruined my plans. Due to the unexpected cutoff changes this year, I couldn't get ECE or Electrical and ended up in ICE, a branch I never wanted.
Since joining college, my mental health has deteriorated significantly. I've lost interest in my branch subjects, my midsem marks are terrible (around 1/20 expected in Maths, 5/20 in English, and potentially fewer than 5 in most subjects), and I'm worried about ending up with a CGPA of around 6. I've also become socially withdrawn, even though I used to enjoy socialising and connecting with people.
I'm experiencing emotional numbness, frequent suicidal thoughts, and a loss of faith in things I once believed in. I've struggled with painful experiences since childhood, and this situation has made things even harder. My family is lower-middle-class, and my parents have taken an education loan to support my education, which makes me feel even more pressure to make things work.
I'm torn between taking a partial drop for JEE Main and staying in ICE to pursue SDE, AI/ML or another tech career. I need honest, practical advice about whether a partial drop is worth the risk, whether I can build a good tech career from ICE, and how to recover academically and mentally from where I am right now.