Introducing the BUET Algorithm

The first part of succeeding in BUET is getting rid of the idea that you have to succeed in BUET. Rather, you should think about succeeding in life. This undergraduate 4 years is a very small part of your whole life, and trust me it plays very little part in it. Just as nobody now asks you what was your GPA in HSC and whether you got a scholarship in class 8, nobody is going to ask you CGPA a few years after you enter the real world. And in the real world, real skills will matter. That’s a different topic, for now, remember that it is a short period of your long life, it’s not that serious as it appears.

Second, you have to search for what is important for your life. This is something you cannot decide, neither the BUET teachers can decide it for you. You can just find it out within yourself. What is important to your life is deeply rooted to the way you have been grown. And what I found in my research is what we usually want, is directly related to what is said to us to be important by others, that may or may not be actually important to you. Think about your talented classmates. Before getting into BUET, if anyone asked them what they wanted to be, their reply would have been ‘Engineer’. If you asked them, “do you want to be a university teacher?” they would’ve threw the thought away. But now, it has been told to them that being a teacher is a precious thing, and only the high achievers can get it. After hearing this, all of them now want to become teachers, without thinking whether they REALLY want it or not! So, my suggestion is, don’t get bogged down to the idea what other people want you to become. Ask yourself, what YOU want to be. Think about those moments in your childhood why did you want to become an engineer, there must’ve been a reason. Find that reason, and pursue it. The things that were important to you then, are still important to you, whether you can see that or not. A quote from one of my Facebook posts, “We are the same old tree with a few new branches.” If you wanted to become an engineer to build cool things, then start building cool things. Just do it what you came here to do. And do it passionately, persistently, and no power on earth can stop you succeed. And how many times you fail, you will be happy. Socrates said that, I didn’t. The purpose of human life is to acquire happiness, and not the opposite. So dedicate a time in a day to think about the things that is important to you, that is going to make you happy. Then find out a way how you can do it, and then go ahead and do it. The thing that make you happy can vary from your academics, don’t worry about that right now, the important thing is what is important to you.

(You must be thinking, this is crazy, where do I have that time, and I need CGPA. Well I’m coming to that part.)

Third step, document what you do. Now, you are doing the things that make you happy, but what about the future? There are certain branches of future. If you want to do a high salary job in Bangladesh, being a hard-core coder and being able to communicate in a professional style is the only thing that matters and an MBA will definitely be helpful. If you want to become a teacher, CGPA is the only thing that matters, you know that. But if you want to apply abroad for post-graduation, things get very different. Unlike the popular belief, only CGPA is not the important fact here, neither quick programming skill will give you success. When you apply to an American University, they are gonna ask two questions while reviewing your application: 1. “Is this student bringing anything to our university?” 2. “Is he/she going to succeed in our university?” if you can convince them with this two questions, you are way to go. Now there are many ways to convince them for this two questions. Undoubtedly, CGPA is one of them, but there are 4 other parts of application that are equally powerful to do the same job. 1. GRE, 2. Essay, 3. Extra-curricular, 4. Recommendation letter. If you invest your time on these parts of the application from now, by the time you’ll go to fourth year, you’ll have a hell out of strong application than most of your companions. How to do them? That’s another topic, needs a separate piece of writing. For now, you have to keep the documents of how you have spent your time pursuing your passion, even if it is outside your academics. This is going to shine in your essay, extra-curricular, recommendation. The documents can be a youtube channel, a blog, a personal website, scientific papers, certificates, anything. If you ask me what would be the best kind of extra-curricular for getting admission, there is no certain type, but doing research in undergraduate is supposed to work better than others. (Ask me later how to do research in undergrad. Yes, is possible!)

As your brain is now free from the illusion of CGPA, you are ready to take the final pills, “How to get CGPA, but easily.” What I’ve found in my observation is that however hard you study a term, in the end the term final is going to matter. And what we study in the term final is way different from what we study throughout the term. So it came to me, “why don’t we study for the term final from the beginning?” So, the trick is buy the term questions in the beginning of the term, and thoroughly analyze which part of the syllabus is actually important for the exam. And just take preparation for that specific part in that specific way of term question from the beginning of the term. It will help you in the CT’s as well. Though you may have to sacrifice some marks in the CT’s.

The second observation is many teachers in BUET makes very simple topics incredibly complicated for us and takes away all our interest for that topic. To prevent them from doing so, you have to read the topic before it is taught in the class. In this way, you’ll understand it better by yourself, you’ll understand what is being taught in the class better, and you’ll feel smart in the class and this will give you a positive feedback to do better in the future.

Third observation, this is not only true for BUET, it is for all engineering universities in the world, that is engineering study is too much pressure to be done alone. The best way to study engineering is to study in a group. Remember the group has to be an efficient study group, not a few friends chatting with each other. Many BUET students becomes examofobic after coming to the university. Many of them just study to make a good result, hardly being aware of the higher happiness of life as you are after reading this article. So, to make a study group, convince your partners that you should solve the term final problems and prepare for next day’s class beforehand so that you can get a good grades and marks in CT’s (which all of you definitely will!). While your partners purpose might be to get marks and grades, your purpose will be to save time from your study to do the things that are truly important to you. Now, when the study group is made, distribute the topics among yourselves, read previous year’s chotha (collect it from a senior), and each of the members study a different topic. When someone is finished, he/she has to teach the topic to the rest of the team. This way the study group is incredibly efficient. In classes, if you find the class too boring, and you don't understand anything at all, don't pay attention to the class, just sit in there and read your other books, may be next day's class or term questions. And in the time that you save in this way, you can spend it to do the things that you really want to do, also understanding the real significance of the topics that are being taught in the class, and deeply understanding which part of the topic is really necessary for the real life.

So, keep bunking, keep learning, and you are sure to be successful happy and successful. :)