Why JEE Coaching Didn't Help But Career Mentoring Did: A Student's Journey from Engineering Dropout to UX Designer

Four Years of Doing the Right Things for the Wrong Reasons

Rohan Mehta grew up in Surat in a household where engineering was not a career option so much as an assumption. His father was a chemical engineer. His maternal uncle was a software engineer at an MNC in Pune. The question was never whether Rohan would pursue engineering — it was which entrance exam, which branch, which college.

He entered a JEE coaching institute in Class 11. He was a disciplined student: attended every class, completed every assignment, stayed up late working through problem sets. By Class 12, he had a Maths score of 97 and a Physics score of 91. He cleared JEE Mains with a score that earned him admission to the National Institute of Technology, Surat — for Computer Science Engineering.

On paper, this was success.

"My parents were proud. My relatives were calling to congratulate. I should have been happy. I wasn't. I kept telling myself it was nervousness about college, or homesickness. I didn't admit to myself until much later that I had never actually wanted to be an engineer."

Two Years at NIT: A Growing Mismatch

Rohan's first semester at NIT was a familiar adjustment. The work was harder than coaching, the pace was faster, the self-study expectations higher. He adapted. His grades were respectable — not brilliant, but solid. Nothing alarming.

The warning signs were subtler than failing grades. He noticed that his engineering classmates would debate technical problems during free periods — genuinely, for fun. They found beauty in elegant code. They got excited about system design discussions. Rohan sat with them and felt nothing. He was not bored or unintelligent. He simply did not care about the things that lit his batchmates up.

What he did care about was noticing: how apps made him feel when he used them, whether a website's layout frustrated him or delighted him, why some notifications felt intrusive and others welcome. He spent hours on Behance and Dribbble looking at interface designs. He volunteered for the cultural committee and spent weeks designing the event poster — not from obligation, but because he genuinely enjoyed the craft of making something look right.

By second year, his attendance had dropped. His focus in lectures had dissolved. He was not failing, but he was fading.

"I tried to talk to my academic advisor once. He said, 'Engineering is difficult for everyone in second year, just push through.' I never brought it up again."

The Decision to Leave

At the end of second year, Rohan made a decision that he describes as "the most terrifying and most obvious thing I have ever done." He called his parents and told them he was withdrawing from NIT.

The conversation was, by his account, devastating. His father went silent for a long time before asking what he planned to do instead. Rohan had no answer. He knew what he was leaving. He had no idea what he was walking toward.

He came home to Surat. He spent two months trying to figure out what to do next and failing to make progress. A family friend who had heard about Dheya suggested he take their assessment before making any decision.

"I was skeptical. I'd taken aptitude tests before — they always said I was good at Maths, which I knew. What I needed was someone to help me understand why I was miserable despite being good at something."

The RAPD Assessment: A Different Kind of Answer

Rohan took the RAPD assessment in November 2023. His results surprised him — or rather, they confirmed what he had been unable to articulate.

His RAPD profile showed a dominant Practical orientation combined with a strong Analytical dimension. The Practical score, his mentor Supriya Nair explained, does not mean someone is simply "hands-on" in a physical sense. It means a person is driven by making and building things that have immediate, tangible, human-facing impact — creating experiences, not just systems.

"Supriya showed me the difference between engineering as building systems for a machine and design as building systems for a human. I had never heard it framed that way. The moment she said it I felt like something clicked."

The assessment also flagged his Relational dimension — higher than his engineering profile would predict — which reflects an orientation toward understanding how other people think and respond. This combination of Practical-Analytical-Relational is, Supriya explained, a classic foundation for UX and product design work.

Rohan had never heard of UX design as a formal profession. He had been doing intuitive UX critique for two years without knowing the field existed.

Building a New Direction in 14 Months

Supriya worked with Rohan over eight mentoring sessions to construct a concrete transition path. The plan was structured and specific:

Months 1–3: Foundational learning — the Google UX Design Certificate, followed by two structured Figma courses, building a personal project portfolio with three case studies.

Months 4–6: Freelance work through Fiverr and direct referrals to build real-world portfolio pieces and earn income simultaneously.

Months 7–10: Target a junior UX designer role at a mid-size product company; use the portfolio and freelance work as credentials in lieu of a degree.

Months 11–14: Apply to full-time roles, negotiate on the strength of demonstrated work rather than academic credentials.

"The plan felt overwhelming when I first read it. But Supriya broke it into weekly actions. Each week I had something concrete to do. That structure is what I needed — I'm not someone who thrives in ambiguity."

Rohan followed the plan with the same discipline he had once applied to JEE preparation — but this time, it did not feel like discipline. It felt like momentum.

The Outcome: 14 Months Later

By January 2025, fourteen months after starting the Dheya programme, Rohan had:

• A portfolio with six UX case studies (three academic, three freelance)
• ₹1.1 lakh earned through freelance design work
• A job offer from a SaaS product company in Pune as a Junior UX Designer at ₹9.2 LPA
• A second offer from a startup at ₹8.5 LPA with significant equity

He accepted the Pune offer.

By February 2026 — his one-year anniversary in the role — he had been promoted to UX Designer (dropping the "junior") with a revised CTC of ₹12 LPA. Several of his NIT batchmates who completed their degree in the same period are currently in the ₹6–8 LPA range in their first engineering jobs.

"I don't say this to be unkind to them. I say it because I think the narrative that dropping out equals failing is wrong. What matters is alignment. I found mine, and it cost me two years. But it would have cost me much more to stay."

What Rohan's Story Tells Us About the Coaching System

Rohan is careful not to condemn JEE coaching wholesale. "The coaching taught me how to work hard and think rigorously. Those are real skills. But nobody in that system — not the coaching institute, not the school, not my family — ever asked me what I wanted or what I was oriented toward. The assumption was that the destination was fixed and the only question was performance."

This is the central failure that career mentoring addresses where coaching cannot. Coaching is about optimising performance on a defined path. Mentoring is about examining whether the path itself is right.

The two are not in competition — they serve different questions. But for millions of students entering the Indian coaching system, the second question is never asked. The consequences of that omission play out years later, in the quiet suffering of people who are technically succeeding and personally miserable.

Choosing Your Direction Before You Commit

If you are a student — or a parent of a student — preparing to enter a high-stakes preparation track, the most important investment you can make is not in better coaching. It is in understanding orientation before the track begins.

Dheya's RAPD assessment is specifically designed to identify the career orientations that map to genuine long-term satisfaction, not just academic capability. It takes 45 minutes and produces a report that most students describe as the most clarifying document they have ever read about themselves.

Take the career assessment →

Rohan's story is not a case for abandoning engineering. It is a case for asking, before two years of coaching and two more of college, whether engineering is actually what you want — and if not, what is.

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