After the disappointment of Dhaka University, I had very little confidence left. But the admission season was not over yet. I still had several examinations ahead of me, and I decided that I would keep appearing for them, even if I no longer knew exactly where I was heading.

My BUP results became the first real turning point.

I had applied to multiple units, and in two of them I was placed on the second waiting list, while I was already selected in Information and Communication Engineering, ICE in FST. The moment I saw that result, I felt a kind of satisfaction that I had been desperately waiting for.

Finally, I had something. A backup maybe. A university where I had a place. It may sound simple, but after everything that had happened, it meant much more than that. I had not completely fallen through the cracks. I had survived one part of the admission race. I still had somewhere to go.

That small piece of certainty gave me the confidence to continue. Jahangirnagar University was a different story. I did not get selected there, but, honestly, I had never carried much expectation from the examination. I had mainly treated JU as a preparatory examination for the bigger tests that were coming, particularly the BUP and Sust (B).

In a way, I had also gone there to experience the campus. I did not spend an enormous amount of time preparing specifically for JU. Instead, after the examination, once the BUP examination was over, I bought another preparation capsule and started studying it seriously. I also returned to the notes and lecture sheets I had received from a senior-led coaching programme during the final 36 days of my preparation.

This time, something had changed. I was no longer preparing blindly. The last JU examination had finally taught me how admission tests actually behave.

I understood negative marking better. I had a better idea of how many questions I should attempt and how many I should leave. I understood time management. I had a clearer sense of what topics mattered and what kinds of questions could appear. I had also begun developing an understanding of how previous years’ cut-off marks behaved.

Those lessons became incredibly valuable. When I eventually sat for the Chittagong University D Unit examination, I could feel the difference.

And when I sat for Sust B Unit, I could feel it even more. Eventually, I cracked both, Chittagong University D Unit and Sust B Unit.

The very examinations that I had once approached with uncertainty were now becoming opportunities I could actually handle. Looking back, I realise that JU played a strange but important role in that journey. I did not get into Jahangirnagar, but the experience of sitting for that examination prepared me for the examinations that mattered later.

There were other universities I wanted to try as well. Rajshahi University was one of them. I genuinely wanted to sit for the examination, but its exam date coincided with BUP’s examination, which meant I had to choose one. I chose BUP.

Khulna University was another opportunity I lost. Not because I failed an examination, but because I missed the application deadline. I genuinely thought the last date was the 17th. It was actually the 16th.

That sounds almost ridiculous now. But at that time, it did not feel funny at all. My admission season had started to feel like a sequence of disappointments. First Dhaka University. Then Jahangirnagar University. Then Khulna University, where I did not even get the opportunity.

One after another, the disappointments accumulated. And mentally, I was struggling.

The combination of everything, the difficult period I had already described in Phase 1, the DU rejection, the JU result, the missed KU deadline, and the uncertainty surrounding my future made the entire period incredibly difficult.

At times, I genuinely felt like I was losing my mind. But every result also changed something. BUP reduced the anxiety a little. Chittagong University reduced it further. And when the Sust B Unit result came out, a huge part of that fear simply disappeared. For the first time in months, I could breathe.

By then, I had three realistic options in front of me: Sust B Unit, Chittagong University D Unit, and BUP’s FST Information and Communication Engineering.

In BUP particularly, the timing of the admission test created an unusual situation. The BUP examination was held after the Dhaka University examination, so many students who had failed to secure DU admission ended up holding on to their BUP seats.

As a result, fewer seats were released. Students who were waiting for FASS and FSSS often remained stuck on the waiting lists. In previous years, the movement had gone much further, sometimes reaching the third or fourth waiting lists. But in our year, the process effectively closed much earlier. Fortunately, I had already secured FST, and that mattered.

Because by that point, I had finally learned something that I wish I had understood from the beginning: you do not need to know exactly how the story will end. You just need to keep yourself in the story.

Sust B, Chittagong University, BUP FST. Three opportunities that, a few months earlier, I would have been grateful simply to have. Now, I had to choose one. And that choice would eventually shape the next chapter of my life. But that is a story for another phase.

Part 1: https://tbsgraduates.net/campus/diaries-of-an-admission-season/the-exam-i-needed-to-fail/

Part 2: https://tbsgraduates.net/campus/diaries-of-an-admission-season/the-cost-of-two-dreams/