GIIS’ IBDP 2022 World Topper, Pragyan Pratyush, has been taught from a young age – ‘if something is hard to achieve, you don’t run away from it, you do it anyway.’ He opted for the IB Diploma Programme (IBDP), known for its in-depth, research-based approach, despite being told it’s an extremely rigorous international curriculum.
With a perfect score of 45/45, and all set for his next academic destination – The London School of Economics, where he’s going to study Economics – Pragyan’s passion for learning is worth emulating. A sportsperson with interest in cricket, tennis, and basketball, Pragyan draws his inspiration to succeed from different sources.
Here we hear from Pragyan about the various ways that helped him to crack the IBDP exams:
1. Adapt to your situation.
“As soon as IBDP started, I realised I would have to attend school online, which was something I wasn’t accustomed to. Initially, it was pretty hard to adjust to but at the end, I feel I was able to adjust to the situation pretty well along with the rest of my cohort. It was possible due to what our teachers at GIIS have taught us – adapt to your situation.
“One comparison you can draw to this is, when you’re playing cards, you have to make the best from what you have in your deck. So for us despite the pandemic we still had to make it work and had to play our own cards to the best possible extent we could. And I feel that did play a major role in us being able to successfully give the IB Diploma exams.”
2. Learn to manage your own time.
“I think one important thing to realise as IB students is that the only sound you should be hearing is the sound of the clock ticking because really you have limited time. You have to balance out your academic and social life. Otherwise, you cannot do this course well because it’s very rigorous. People say that you have to choose between three things in IB – academics, sleep and social life. For me, I gave up on sleep!
“It’s very important to manage your time in IB. You should set deadlines for yourself to ensure all your assignments are done on time, and you’re ahead of the work instead of behind it. Because if you’re lagging behind in work, it’s an extremely tough thing to catch up or achieve the grades you want. Therefore always be ahead of your work.”
3. Choose an Extended Essay (EE) topic you’re passionate about.
“My advice for EE would be to opt for a topic that you’re interested in. For example, if I didn’t take Economics, and if I had gone for English EE, honestly I don’t think I would have been able to do as well. Because writing 4,000 words for EE is a big task. And if you’re not interested in the topic, then your work would suffer. You may start procrastinating it and it’ll end up stalling all other tasks you have in IB, which is truckloads.
“For me, I looked at things I like, which is studying Economics and also knowing more about my motherland, India. So I started looking into some of the economic problems in India. And I found that India has a very high carbon emissions rate. And the government from 2015 onwards, started investing into renewable energy to try and reduce the carbon footprint.
“One particular state that invested the most money was Gujarat. So I started researching about it. And I formulated the topic, which was ‘to what extent has the investment in renewable energy led to economic and environmental development in Gujarat?’ What followed next was a very rigorous research process.”
4. Don’t let go of your ‘I can do this’ attitude.
“Personally, I wasn’t always the best in mathematics. Once when I didn’t fare well in Mathematics, my parents took the effort of explaining to me the importance of the subject. From that point onwards, I said to myself – I can do this, I have the ability to do this, I just have to put in more effort. And with help from teachers, I was able to channel my learning to become better at mathematics.
When you see positive results, you tend to fall in love with that thing even more. My improvement in Mathematics made me fall in love with the subject, which also overflowed into Economics, which is a pretty quantitative subject itself at times.
“In Grade 8, when I first started learning economics, I was fascinated by how important a role it plays in every facet of our daily life. For example, how one decision can lead to an opportunity cost absolutely baffled me, leading to my decision to pursue Economics.”
With a school average of 38.6 points, 10 students emerged as IB World Toppers (45/45) and 16 as Near Perfect (44/45) scorers in the GIIS 2022 IBDP cohort. With 96 World Toppers and Near Perfect scorers in the last decade, our results hold a testimony to our commitment towards student excellence.
Also read: GIIS IBDP students continue to shine
If you are interested to know more about IBDP curriculum at GIIS, please don’t hesitate to contact our friendly admissions team.
This blog is a summarised version of a podcast with Pragyan Pratyush, GIIS IBDP 2022 World Topper
Shubhdarshani Mitra
Shubhdarshani has over 10 years of experience in content creation, curation and editing. She has worked for Indian newspapers, school magazines and international news websites where she worked closely with the leadership on the execution and communication of the content strategy. Aside from work, she’s a passionate B&W photographer and storyteller.
