Every year, hundreds of thousands of students take the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) examination, one of the toughest exams in India. Generally, the candidates feel that it is necessary to prepare at least for a year to successfully pass an exam for a government job. IAS Gaurav Agarwal, however, is a different case. The officer not only cleared the UPSC exam but became the first person from Rajasthan to do so.

It doesn’t stop here, Gaurav also cleared JEE Advance and CAT which are also the toughest exams of engineering and MBA. Let’s look at the journey of IPS Gaurav Agarwal. He completed his school in Jaipur. He then cracked the IIT JEE in 2001 at the age of 16 and bagged All India Rank 45. He did his graduation from IIT Kanpur but his degree got extended for another semester.

Gaurav failed in one of the subjects during the final semester of his graduation degree which led him a year back. However, this didn’t drop the confidence of the IAS officer and he cleared by his sheer hard work. Amid this, he also cleared CAT in 2005 which is considered to be the toughest exam for MBA in India at the age of 21. He scored 99.94 percent on the exam. Gaurav did his post-graduation in Finance from IIM Lucknow. He was the gold medalist of his batch.

He worked as an Investment Banker at Citigroup in Hong Kong for around 3.5 years before he decided to quit his Rs 1.25 crore job and clear UPSC.

According to a report by PTI, Gaurav’s first attempt at the UPSC exam was in the year 2012. In that year, he ranked 244 and got selected as an IPS officer. Gaurav was doing his training at the Police Academy in Hyderabad but his intentions were very clear becoming an IAS officer.

Gaurav got married to Dr Preeti Airun just four days after his interview for the UPSC exam. Throughout his journey his family and wife supported him.

In his second attempt in 2013, Gaurav cleared the exam again with flying colours and became the first person in his home state to get AIR 1 in the exam.