Consider this the first entry in a series, written the way I wish an older sibling had written it for me.

Let’s start with the obvious question: why computer science, of all things? The honest answer is almost embarrassing. Somewhere around class nine or ten, I watched one too many movies where the impossibly smart protagonist sits in a dark room, fingers flying across a keyboard, hacking into something important while dramatic music plays… and I thought, that’s it, that’s the dream.

I didn’t know the first thing about how difficult the subject actually was. All I knew was that I wanted to do some “beep beep boop boop” on a computer and somehow look devastatingly cool while doing it. If you are currently choosing your subject based on a similar Hollywood delusion, welcome, you are not alone, and there is no judgment here; only a gentle warning that reality has significantly fewer dramatic soundtracks.

I also loved international relations, genuinely. The way global politics moves like a giant chessboard of shifting alliances and quiet psychological warfare still fascinates me. But that is a story for another day, because this particular tale is about the road that eventually led to Buet.

Now, before you take any advice from a stranger on the internet, you deserve some proof that I actually survived this circus and didn’t just wander in by accident. So here are my receipts, cringe-inducing as they are: I sat for the medical exam with zero preparation, so let’s kindly skip over that one. I placed 17th in the Mist admission test. In DU’s B unit, I stood 151st in the science group. At IUT, somewhere around 114th or 116th, my memory is mercifully fuzzy there. DU’s A unit gave me 98th.

And then Buet, the final boss of Bangladeshi admission tests, handed me 92nd position, and to this day I genuinely do not know how that happened. I stopped there and never sat for anything else. Writing this paragraph out loud feels like reading my own diary in public, but I promise it’s necessary, you need to know I actually walked this road before you trust me to describe the potholes.

So, let’s get into it. The first and most underrated question of your entire admission journey is one nobody actually asks you directly: how much pressure are you genuinely willing to carry? Most of you reading this are around eighteen, so let me put it to you plainly, like a friend and not a lecture.

Imagine, hypothetically, that you already have a golden ticket into any subject you want. Remember, there is a whole life waiting on the other side of this admission season, so choose with that in mind, not just with the next three months in mind.

Do you want a field that demands you study day and night? If so, what kind of demands are we talking about? Do you want to spend years exploring the wiring of the human body? Do you want mathematics, where logic sometimes twists itself into knots just complex enough to make you question your own sanity? Do you want engineering, where half the syllabus lives outside the classroom and you become your own strictest teacher? Or do you want economics and politics, watching how one quietly rules the other?

Once you’ve picked a direction, ask the harder, more grown-up question: what is this subject actually worth in the real world right now, and are you genuinely ready to compete for a seat in it?

This is not a decision to make alone in your room at 2am scrolling through motivational reels. Talk to your parents. Talk to seniors, cousins, anyone already standing inside the field you’re eyeing, because their scars will teach you faster than your imagination ever could. For me, the dream of being a “computer geek” building revolutionary things from a dark room won the top spot, with economics and international relations quietly waiting as backups. Setting that real, honest target is arguably the single most important step in this entire process; think of it as choosing your destination before you start throwing darts at a moving map.

Then comes the part that nearly broke me: figuring out where to actually prepare. I was clear that Buet was my primary goal, mostly for the sheer weight the name carries and the doors it quietly unlocks. But I also knew better than to put all my eggs in one very competitive basket, so I built a backup list of other engineering universities, plus Dhaka University.

Here is a mistake I watched far too many classmates make: getting themselves admitted into a dozen different coaching centres and test circuits, only to burn out halfway and skip most of the actual exams. Nobody is superhuman, and burnout in this season is not a myth, it is a very real wall that a lot of us hit face-first.

Protect your health first, then build your strategy around whatever energy you have left. Think of your admission season less like a sprint and more like rationing supplies on a long trek, you don’t spend everything on day one.

Personally, I enrolled in an engineering-focused coaching programme, and closer to the DU exam, I picked up question banks and sat for a few free model tests on the side. I’ll unpack the specifics of that strategy in a future article, so consider this one the trailer.

But if there’s one thing I want you to genuinely absorb from this piece, let it be this: your life is not a tragedy film, and admission season, dramatic as it feels, is not the final act. If you find yourself overwhelmed this season, stop and remind yourself of the options actually sitting in front of you, because there is always another road, even when the fog makes it impossible to see one.

Yes, the uncertainty is real, and yes, it will occasionally sit on your chest at 3am. But something that helped me enormously was repeating one simple truth: admission is just the process of walking from one classroom into the next, nothing more sinister than another promotion testing what you already learned in HSC. It’s less a battlefield and more a long, exhausting relay race, and every runner before you has survived their leg of it too.

I have been through some genuinely rough patches during this season, low enough that I didn’t think I’d be writing cheerfully about it later. But here I am, cringe admission stats and all, hopefully proving to you that you are not walking this road alone, and that it is, in fact, survivable, occasionally funny in hindsight, and sometimes even a little bit fun once you stop taking it as seriously as your anxious brain insists you should.

I’ll be back with the next part of this series, covering exactly how I handled the academic pressure of my own admission journey and the mistakes I’d genuinely undo if I could. Until then, stay healthy, stay a little bit stubborn, and maybe keep dreaming about your own version of “beep beep boop boop,” even if reality turns out to be far less cinematic than the movies promised.