How Kushagra Shrikhande Went From Below Average to IIT Indore

Below Average Until Class 10, by Choice of Effort

Labels applied in school are usually descriptions of habit rather than ceiling. Kushagra had been below average through Class 10, and then he decided to improve.

That decision came from him, which is the part worth noticing. Students pushed into ambition by parents rarely sustain the workload past the first difficult month. Students who choose it themselves usually do. What he needed at that point was not motivation, which he now had, but a structure capable of converting it into IIT JEE coaching that would actually reach JEE Advanced standard within two years.

The First Arrangement: Evening Batch Plus School

His initial plan was the conventional one. He enrolled at NoMoreClass for the evening programme and continued at Sindhi School for Class 11.

This arrangement works for many students and it is the default across Bengaluru. School handles the board syllabus, the evening IIT JEE coaching handles the entrance syllabus, and the student handles the seams between them. The cost is hidden in that last part: travel time, duplicated topics taught differently in two places, and no single person holding responsibility for the whole plan. For a student starting from behind, those seams are expensive.

One Month In: A Conversation That Changed the Plan

Within about a month, after discussing his situation with Deepak Sir, himself an IITian from IIT Roorkee with Mechanical Engineering, Kushagra concluded that the integrated programme would serve him considerably better.

The timing is the instructive part. A month is early enough for a change to be worth making and late enough to have real evidence about what is and is not working. Most families discover the same thing in month nine, when switching is no longer practical. Honest IIT JEE coaching should be willing to tell a student the current arrangement is the wrong one, even when that conversation is uncomfortable.

“I was below average at school until Class 10, and then I decided to improve. Within a month of joining, Deepak Sir helped me see that the integrated programme was the right structure for me.”

Kushagra Shrikhande — ITY 2021–23

The Catch: The Switch Required Changing Schools

The integrated programme could not simply be added to his existing arrangement. Joining it meant changing schools, which turned an academic decision into a family one.

His previous school did not refund the fees already paid. That is a plain financial loss, incurred at a stage when nothing about the outcome was guaranteed, on the strength of one month's assessment and a mentor's judgement. Most families would reasonably decide to wait a year. Waiting a year, in a two-year cycle, generally means not doing it at all.

A Father Who Absorbed the Loss

Kushagra's father supported the switch and took the call, accepting a significant financial hit at that stage.

What matters here is how the sacrifice was handled. Money spent on a child's education can be presented as an investment they now owe, which loads a student with debt-like pressure through the exact months they need clear focus. It can also be absorbed quietly as the parent's own decision. Kushagra's father chose the second, and his son went into the integrated programme carrying commitment rather than guilt.

What the Integrated Format Actually Changed

Under one roof, with school and IIT JEE coaching finally aligned, the seams disappeared. School content and entrance content stopped being taught twice in incompatible ways, travel time collapsed, and one team held the whole plan.

For a student who had been below average two years earlier, that consolidation was worth more than extra hours would have been. He was no-nonsense, focused, disciplined and hard-working by this stage, and he actively motivated others in the batch. IIT JEE coaching cannot manufacture that attitude, but the right structure stops wasting it, which is most of what a turnaround requires.

Why Switching Early Beats Optimising Late

There is a general lesson in the sequencing. Most families spend the final year optimising within a structure chosen in the first month, and never revisit the structure itself.

If the format is wrong, no amount of effort inside it fully compensates. The practical advice is to review honestly at the four-to-six week mark: is coverage on schedule, are the two syllabi genuinely aligned, and is one person accountable for the whole plan? Where the answer is no, changing IIT JEE coaching early is cheaper than every workaround that follows.

What Kushagra's Result Proves

He cracked KCET, JEE Main, BITSAT and JEE Advanced, and joined IIT Indore.

Three things combined: a student who decided for himself to improve, a mentor willing to recommend an inconvenient change one month in, and a father who absorbed the cost of that change without transferring the pressure. Remove any one and the story ends differently. For families who have been told their child is below average, this is a reminder that the label describes the last two years, not the next two.