There was a little ball of sunshine in a village in Ariyalur, Tamil Nadu. Her name was S. Anitha. She lost her mother when she was young. Her father was a daily-wage laborer, the sole breadwinner of the family. She came from a world where becoming a doctor was not an inherited expectation but an almost audacious dream. Yet she. She scored 1,176 out of 1,200 in her Class XII Tamil Nadu State Board examination, securing a medical cut-off of 196.75 out of 200. She wanted to become a doctor because she knew what the absence of one could mean to a village like hers. She wanted to become a first-generation doctor and return to the people she came from. Then came NEET.

In 2017, Anitha scored 86 out of 720 in the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test. The girl who had excelled in her school examination suddenly appeared, through the arithmetic of one national test, to be nowhere near good enough for medicine. She had fought against the implementation of NEET and had even approached the Supreme Court. On September 1, 2017, she died by suicide. Her death cannot responsibly be explained by an examination alone; a human life is never reducible to a score. But neither can we erase the fact that the medical seat she had spent years dreaming about had become dependent on a system she believed was stacked against students like her. And that is where the uncomfortable question begins.

What exactly do we mean when we say merit?

We speak about merit as if it were something pure, something that exists independently inside a student and can be extracted neatly through an examination. We put a number beside a name and call it ability. We put another number beside another name and call it failure. But a mark sheet cannot tell the story behind the number. It cannot tell us what kind of educational world produced it. The number is visible. The privilege behind the number is not.

NEET was built around an idea that sounds almost impossible to oppose: uniformity. One country, one examination, one standard. The argument was that a common entrance test could replace a fragmented system and make medical admissions more transparent and comparable. But there is a difference between making the examination uniform and making the opportunity uniform.

India is not a uniform educational landscape. A student from an affluent urban school and a student from a rural government school may sit for the same examination, but they do not necessarily arrive there carrying the same preparation. One may have spent two years inside a specialized coaching ecosystem. Another may have spent those two years trying to master a state-board syllabus that does not map perfectly onto the competitive examination. The question paper cannot see that difference.

Should the system be allowed to ignore it?

The National Medical Journal of India itself questioned whether NEET had actually delivered the uniformity promised by its introduction. It pointed to differences between state-board syllabi and the NEET syllabus and questioned whether merely translating a common question paper into different languages could create genuine equivalence between students educated in very different systems. This is the first crack in the mythology of merit. A child who has never had access to the same educational resources as another child is asked to compete with that child, and when the results arrive, we call the difference in their scores a difference in merit.

But what if it is partly a difference in opportunity?

This is where coaching enters the story. NEET was supposed to be an examination. It has increasingly become an ecosystem. Coaching centres have built an enormous industry around teaching students not simply biology, physics and chemistry, but how to beat the examination itself. The longer the competition becomes, the more valuable specialized preparation becomes. And the more valuable specialized preparation becomes, the more it becomes something families with money can purchase. The rich do not buy intelligence. They buy preparation. They buy test series. They buy specialized study material. They buy private teachers. They buy repeated mock examinations. They buy a quiet room. They buy time. They can sometimes buy another year of preparation without worrying about whether the family can survive it financially. A poor student cannot necessarily buy any of those things. And yet both answer sheets eventually arrive at the same evaluator.

The irony is brutal: the examination does not charge different prices for its question paper, but the preparation required to compete successfully against it is not equally affordable. The NMJI has also raised concerns about the growing dependence on coaching and the way competitive examinations can shift the centre of education away from schools themselves. That creates another casualty: school education itself.

When a student's medical future depends overwhelmingly on NEET, Class XI and XII can stop being years of education and become years of preparation. The classroom becomes the place where attendance happens. The coaching centre becomes the place where the real examination is supposedly taught.

What happens to a system when children begin believing that school is secondary and the coaching institute is their actual education? We tell students to understand concepts, to explore science, to learn because knowledge matters. Then we give them an examination in which a fraction of a mark can change their medical college, their rank, their year, sometimes the entire direction of their life. We have turned learning into a race against the clock and then wondered why students are exhausted. There is also a deeper problem with the argument that NEET necessarily produces better medical students.

A common examination can rank students very efficiently. But ranking efficiently is not the same as measuring everything that makes a good doctor. Medicine requires scientific knowledge, certainly. It requires discipline, memory, reasoning and the ability to learn enormous amounts of information. But it also requires communication, empathy, judgment, resilience and an ability to understand human beings. A three-hour examination cannot measure all of that. And even within academic ability, a score tells us how someone performed on that examination not the complete extent of what that person is capable of becoming.

The NMJI article goes further, questioning whether NEET actually delivered the improvement in quality that was used to justify its introduction. It pointed out the striking disconnect between very high school-board performance and very low NEET performance among some state-board students, raising questions about whether the examination was testing knowledge or, in part, familiarity with a particular curriculum and examination structure. That brings us to language. India likes to say that NEET is available in multiple Indian languages, as though translation itself solves the problem. It does not. Translating a question is not the same as translating an educational ecosystem. A Tamil-medium student does not suddenly receive the same preparation as a CBSE student because the English question has been translated into Tamil. The textbook, the sequence in which concepts are taught, the depth, the examination culture, the teacher training and the resources may differ. And yet, at the end, we place both students beneath the same national measuring scale.

The NMJI made precisely this point: language availability alone does not establish equivalence when the underlying syllabi and educational experiences are different. This is why Anitha's story still matters. Not because her 1,176 marks automatically meant she deserved an MBBS seat. That would be too simplistic.  It matters because her results exposed a contradiction we still struggle to confront: how can a student perform exceptionally within the education system she was given and then be judged as though that education never existed?

Her board marks were not proof that she would necessarily have become a brilliant doctor. Her NEET score was not proof that she could never have become one. Both were measurements. The mistake was treating one measurement as though it contained the entire truth about her ability. And then there is the issue of trust. An examination as consequential as NEET requires more than a secure question paper. It requires public faith that the rules are stable, the process is transparent, the paper is protected, mistakes are acknowledged and corrected, and every student is competing under genuinely comparable conditions. The controversies surrounding NEET in recent years—including allegations of paper leaks, irregularities, grace marks and disputes over results—have damaged that trust. The problem with an examination scandal is not merely that some students may have received an unfair advantage. It is that every honest student's achievement becomes surrounded by suspicion.

The student who spent two years studying cannot know whether the person above her studied harder or had access to something she did not. And when that uncertainty enters an examination, merit itself begins to lose its authority. A national examination asks students to trust the institution behind it with their futures. That trust is not a luxury. It is the foundation of the examination. And perhaps nowhere is the cost of this system more visible than in the mental health crisis surrounding high-stakes entrance examinations.

Every year, teenagers are asked to compress an enormous amount of science into a few hours and then attach their entire future to the result. Students take drop years. Some take multiple attempts. Families invest their savings. Friendships disappear into study schedules. Sleep becomes negotiable. Failure becomes shame. The frightening part is not simply that students are stressed. It is that we have normalized the stress. We call sleeplessness dedication. We call burnout discipline. We call anxiety competition. We tell an eighteen-year-old that another year of life is nothing compared with a medical seat. And when the student break under the pressure, we ask why they were not strong enough. Perhaps the question should sometimes be why the system demanded so much strength from a child in the first place. I know what that number feels like. I was a NEET aspirant too. I scored 586 out of 720. I missed the seat I wanted by four marks. Four. To someone outside the system, 586 may sound like an excellent score. But NEET does not ask whether your score is good in isolation. It asks where your score places you in an enormous queue for a limited number of seats. Four marks can separate a government medical seat from another year of preparation. Four marks can separate a dream from a compromise. And when the alternative is private medical education costing around ₹1 crore, the question stops being purely academic. A crore is not just a number. For an ordinary family, it can represent decades of savings. It can represent a house. It can represent parents' retirement. It can represent another child's education. It can represent financial security. I could not look at that price and call it an opportunity. I could not ask my family to mortgage its future so that I could pursue mine. So I walked away. And that experience changed the way I look at the word merit.

Because if two students are equally capable but only one can afford another attempt, another year of coaching or another route through private education, are we really measuring merit or are we measuring who can remain in the race for the longest? This is where we need to distinguish between equality and equity. Equality says: give everyone the same examination. Equity asks: what did everyone have to overcome to reach that examination? Those are not the same question. Giving a rural student the same question paper as an urban student is equality. Giving that rural student access to good teachers, laboratories, reliable electricity, digital resources, quality textbooks, mentoring and affordable preparation is equity. We have become very proud of the first. We have not done nearly enough of the second. And this is not an argument for lowering medical standards.

India needs competent doctors. It needs rigorous medical education. It needs students who genuinely understand science. It needs a system capable of identifying academic ability. But a rigorous standard does not require us to pretend that the country is socially and educationally uniform. India is diverse. Our examination system should be capable of recognising that diversity rather than erasing it. The tragedy is that we often talk about NEET as though there are only two camps: people who believe in merit and people who oppose merit. That is a false choice. I believe in merit. I believe students should work hard. I believe medical education should be demanding. I believe doctors should meet high academic standards. What I do not believe is that a single score, produced after years of unequal educational opportunity, should be treated as a perfect and unquestionable representation of human potential.

Because merit does not grow in empty soil. It needs teachers, books, time, electricity, nutrition, language access, money—or, at the very least, a system capable of compensating for its absence. We cannot plant two seeds in completely different soil, give one water every day and leave the other fighting the heat, then point at the taller plant and declare: “This one had more potential.” That is not how potential works. And that is why Anitha's story should not be remembered merely as the story of a girl who scored 86. It should be remembered as the story of a girl who scored 1,176 in the education system available to her, who came from a family that could not purchase the preparation others could, who challenged a national examination because she believed it disadvantaged students like her, and who became a symbol of the enormous distance between equality on paper and fairness in real life. Her death should not become a political slogan. It should become a question. A question we should ask every time we celebrate a rank and dismiss a failure: Did we measure merit or did we measure the resources that made merit easier to display? Because a country does not become fair merely by putting everyone in the same examination hall.

A country becomes fair when a child's birthplace does not quietly decide how much of her potential the examination is capable of seeing. NEET promised one standard. But India has never had one starting line. And until we fix that, calling the race fair is simply another way of refusing to look at who was allowed to run.

Patron: Dr. K. Manonmani, Principal of GCT

Article prepared by: Mathimalar V (IT 23-27)

The Myth of Merit: When NEET Mistakes Privilege for Potential

If you ask each country about its most important asset, it will say that its youth are its top asset. 

“The youth of today are the leaders of tomorrow”       -        Nelson Mandela

The youths are the symbol of hope for the society. There are many incidents where the youths inculcated justice and brought peace. They play a vital role for society's well-being. 

Usually, in all movies, character arcs are categorized as white-sided or black-sided. That is, good individuals are represented in a white template, and evil is represented in a black template. Why does white represent good and black bad? It was followed not only in movies but also in real life. This practice ended purely with the youths' thought of equality among all.

On February 1, 1960, a group of 4 African Americans were shopping at the F.W. Woolworth shop. After their shopping was over, they went to eat at a non-segregated counter. The servants now refused to offer the services to those 4 men. These men were studying at a university in Greensboro. Among all workers, one woman, a white woman, said,

"I wish this voice could have been raised 10 years ago.”

There are many people who want everyone and everybody to treat them equally. The word is being carried as an action by the courageous youths. “A small spark can cause a big burst.” Likewise, the small group of people’s protest spread across the states and formed a big movement. Many rational youths, including whites, supported this protest to end segregation at the food counters, to eradicate this illogical social norm. The company was reluctant to change its policy. In this protest, both Black and white people protested against this diabolical culture. The mayor of this state created a mayor's committee to ease the tension between the groups. The store manager was reluctant to protest, so he shut down the store. When the store was opened, the sales dropped to one-third. As days passed, company losses were accumulating, resulting in a loss of $200,000. Due to the huge losses faced, the store manager Clarence Harris made four Black women staff members sit at the counter and be served the food. Because of this, the month-long protest yielded the results that people expected. Segregation at the counters finally came to an end. This is the real proof that when youths are joined together, they can demolish all the social stigmas, carry a new world to the next generation.

Now, the world's most debatable topic is GenZ youth and their potential. We all know the youths' potential. There are both positives and negatives. Compared to youths of other generations, Gen-Z youths are proactive, highly competent, and adaptable. Nowadays the youth movement gains more support in society. It is evident across the globe.

Just compare the present world with the year a century ago. That is 2026 vs. 1926. Experts are saying that in 2026 El Nino will occur, and in 1926 it was La Nina's turn. In 1926, economic growth and manufacturing were slow due to less automation, but in the year 2026, everything has completely changed. The manufacturing sector gets its advanced automation. Many things have changed from 1926 to 2026, or should I say we changed many things? The backbone of all development is young people led by great leaders. We have also lost many things, but does the converse hold true that many things have lost us?

The second statement is not suitable now. Indeed, we lost many things. Furthermore, scientific researchers say that the youth of this generation have a significantly shorter attention span compared to previous generations. The growth of technology is massive, but the line between productive use and aimless scrolling grows thinner day by day.

Companies once ran their businesses for the customers' money; now the social media platforms compete for consumers' time. There's a saying,

"Social media is free because you are paying with your free time.”

The youth of this generation need to work hard and, at the same time, be smart enough to complete their missions and achieve their lofty dreams.

Recently, there were discrepancies when the CBSE released the photocopies of the students' evaluation sheets. There was chaos among those students; some of them claimed that the paper was not of legible digital quality. Nearly 20 cases were filed for whole answer script mix-ups. Three youths dug the ground deep and found the discrepancies in the tender process itself. One such student, Sarthak Siddhant, was called by the parliamentary Standing Council to present his investigation. Here, the youths, especially teenagers, found the faults in the tender process itself. As a result of all these, the chairperson and the secretary of the CBSE had been transferred.

Another event, which affected every aspirant, their family, and their society, posed an important question:

"Is the Indian education system still nurturing youths to achieve their dreams?”

If the answer is yes, then there shouldn't be a protest in Jantar Mantar. Hundreds and thousands of students were sitting day and night for the accountability of the government over the paper leak and justice for those students who lost their lives after the leak, which shouldn't have happened.

These are the real events, the real proof that the youths will come and join together to bring societal equality whenever it is corrupted.

Despite the challenges, the youth still remain hope and a pillar of our world, but we are able to see clearly that something went wrong with the youths.

One troubling trend with the youths is the suicide rates. The overall global suicide rate among the youths aged 15-19 is approximately 7.4 per 100000 and 10 to 11 among the aged 20-24. Even though we have this number, it is not uniformly distributed and varies among the genders and countries. Nearly 73% of suicides were reported in low-income countries. South America has seen a vast increase in the rates, with a 56% increase among males and a 43% increase among female youths between 1990 and 2009. Suicides are the third leading cause of deaths among the youths. There are many reasons behind every single suicide. The death rate by suicide among the youth is heartbreaking. They are the assets of the world. Together they transformed this society a lot and have the potential to change for making this earth a better place to live. The loss of youths by suicide is not at all acceptable. We need to look into this matter deeply. Unemployment and societal pressure are some of the societal factors leading to the suicides. To reduce this rate, as a community we should unite to provide support and opportunities necessary to ensure a bright future.

"Youths are worth more than gold, platinum, and diamonds; they are priceless.”

Youths are the game changers of the world, but they should be led in the right direction.

Article prepared by: Mithelesh M B (EEE 24-28)

There's a certain quiet that settles in before a machine comes alive. It's the quiet of blueprints spread across workshop tables, of calculations scratched into the margins of notebooks, of sparks flying as steel slowly gives in to human hands. Long before an engine roars, before tyres touch the track, before a medal ever reaches a podium, engineering starts with something much simpler: a shared belief.

That belief is what brought together 25 students from different departments at Government College of Technology, Coimbatore. Working under the name Team Screwtenizers, part of the SAE Collegiate Club, they set out to build an all-terrain vehicle, but their real goal went further than that. They wanted to prove what a government institution could do when given the chance: resourceful, resilient, and refusing to settle for anything less than their best.

At the helm was Sridharan R., captain and brakes lead, who carried more than just the technical responsibilities of steering the team through competition. His leadership showed up in the problems he helped solve, the confidence he passed on to teammates, and his ability to keep everyone moving forward even when things got hard.

The team's goal was BAJA SAEINDIA Southern Section 2026, held at Hindustan College of Engineering and Technology, Coimbatore. It's a national-level competition where student teams design, build, and test an all-terrain vehicle through a series of tough static and dynamic events. But as with any race, the real work happened long before the starting line.

For almost three months, the team buried themselves in research and development. Days rolled into nights as ideas turned into designs, simulations took the place of guesswork, and prototypes slowly became something real. Every conversation circled back to one question: can we make it better?

Once the design phase wrapped up, the harder part began. Instead of outsourcing fabrication like many teams do, Screwtenizers chose to do it all themselves. Every tube in the chassis was cut, bent, notched, welded, and put together by the students. Their workshop stopped being just a place to build and became something closer to a classroom, where every mistake taught them something and every small improvement felt earned.

There's an old idea that machines carry the fingerprints of the people who built them. If that's true, this vehicle carried the fingerprints of every teammate who stayed late, every volunteer who picked up a tool without being told to, and everyone who refused to stop at "good enough".

When it was finally done, the vehicle weighed 234 kilograms and stood as proof of months of design work, testing, and constant refinement. But no amount of preparation ever fully removes uncertainty, and competitions have a way of asking questions no simulation can answer. Representing the Government College of Technology, Team Screwtenizers was the only government engineering institution from Tamil Nadu competing alongside some of the country's top private and deemed universities.

Their vehicle faced every event BAJA had to offer: weight, cost, design, business presentation, acceleration, manoeuvrability, and endurance. Each one tested something different, and each one demanded a different kind of grit.

Then came the moment that really showed what the team was made of. Just thirty minutes before the official brake test, a rod end on the front A-arm sheared without warning. For a lot of teams, that would've been the end of the road. But Screwtenizers didn't wait around for help. They grabbed their tools, figured out the problem, built a fix, and had the vehicle back in action within ten minutes. In that moment, engineering wasn't just about equations or machinery anymore. It was about trust, composure, and the kind of calm that only comes from truly knowing what you built.

As the competition went on, the vehicle held its own where it counted. One of the team's proudest moments was placing runner-up in the Acceleration Event, hitting a top speed of 34 km/h, a result that reflected months of persistence and teamwork.

The final standings weren't exactly what the team had hoped for, but success isn't always about where you land on a scoreboard. Sometimes it's about the courage to rebuild after something breaks, the determination to solve problems under pressure, and the confidence that comes from getting through challenges that once felt impossible.

For Team Screwtenizers, BAJA SAEINDIA was never only about building a vehicle. It was about building engineers. It was about learning that leadership grows strongest in uncertain moments, that innovation often starts with limited resources, and that persistence can turn a workshop full of steel into something much bigger. None of this would've been possible without the support of their faculty mentors and sponsors. The team is deeply grateful to VNA Groups, C1X Inc., Liha Aerosols, Janatics India Private Limited, and RKG Ghee for believing in their vision and helping a group of young engineers turn ambition into something real.

As one season ends, another quietly begins. The blueprints will come back out. The workshop lights will burn late into the night again. New ideas will replace old ones, and lessons learned will shape stronger designs. Because if this journey proved anything, it's this: steel might form the chassis, and engines might create the motion, but it's people, their vision, their resilience, their shared spirit, that really drive a machine forward. And knowing this team, this isn't the end of their story. It's just the first chapter of an even bigger comeback.

The Journey of Team Screwtenizers: From Vision to the BAJA SAE INDIA Southern Section 2026 Podium

When you ask someone who has built their career, family, and life itself, what would be the one place they wish to go back to? It's almost always either their school or college. Schooling is when life is lived with no idea of the course or the destination. But college, it's one last time you can enjoy life before you succumb to the weight of responsibilities and duties. And when I saw the 2001 passed-out folks of GCT returning to their alma mater, it felt like they were here to relive those days one more time.

The evening prior to the big day, the main auditorium was embellished with carpets, banquet chairs, garlands, vases, and a banner at its roof. The timeless oval was draped with a perceptive poster displaying all the chief events of departments at GCT. Don't mistake this as the only pre-event preparations done; the actual drill was underway weeks prior, which included organized e-registration for the event, picking souvenirs customized at that for everyone who had registered, staging skits, orchestra, choreos, and whatnot. Some of them even came that evening to personally check in on all the arrangements and to meet the junior volunteers in person for a prep talk.

The morning arrived, and so did the attendees. Around 170 people flew in from 12 different countries to have a glimpse of life at GCT again. The entrance of the venue was filled with bear hugs, squeals, laughter, and nostalgia. Meanwhile, the reception desk was utterly chaotic with people in line to collect their presents. The happiness in their gestures when they recognized each other, that amusement on their faces the moment they saw their pals now bald and grey, was endearing. Not to mention, they stepped in the avenue with strowing blossoms and loud cheers. You should have seen the playful banter they were pulling off with the garlands at the reception desk. Adorable.

So, everyone was seated, the stage was set, and with the dignitaries occupying the dais, the ceremony officially began. And when I say they took charge of everything in the ceremony, I mean right from syscom setups and master of ceremonies to performing culturals. One could say the MCs that day were having the time of their lives with how passionately they were hosting. The dignitaries were introduced one by one, and all of them emphasized the importance of reunions and how they give you 10 years of extra life. I believe it resonated with everyone present in the venue. Who are GCTians without the habit of giving back? Well, the current captains of the GCT badminton team were presented with cash incentives by the then-badminton players—so their juniors could soar even higher. And with further adult talks, the morning session came to an end. Wait, before you conclude they probably moved to lunch, it was something even more exciting—group photos and a walk around the campus.

The set for capturing memories was thoughtfully organized. There were segments for department photos, PR photos, all boys, all girls, family photos, couple photos, and whatnot. Snaps, laughter, howls, cheers. Pure unadulterated joy everywhere. With the shots taken, the entire batch took a stroll along the campus with Chenda Melam leading the folks and everyone grooving to it. At the end, everyone gathered in front of the legendary clock tower for the big batch snap. Then it was time for lunch served at the openAudie. The lunch was a full-course meal of soup, starters, entrees, and desserts curated for both vegetarians and non-vegetarians. The ice cream was my favorite part of the lunch.

Now comes the most awaited part—the culturals held at Main Audi. It looked more like a full-blown department function than a reunion. The culturals commenced with the MCs joshing back and forth and the crowd erupting in laughter. The best part? Every performance had a story. The MCs opened this “suitcase of memories” and pulled out an intro for each act—it was like a walk down the memory lane. The dances are powerful, the songs are refreshing, and the skits are funny yet creative. As always, the dance brand of GCT, Eliminators, came in like a storm and took over the stage with their power moves. The batch collectively presented the team with a cash incentive in awe of their work. And the event came to an end with Mustafa blasting off the speaker and the attendees rising for an emotional wave with unshed tears yet happy smiles at having these moments to relive as a GCTian. Classic millennial things! Overall, the afternoon at Main Audi was something that should not have been missed that day.

After the cultural events were over, tea and snacks were served hot. Sipping chai on one hand and spilling tea on the other—the evening came to an end with conversations and goodbyes. What struck us the most was that none seemed unapproachable or rigid. On the contrary, all of them returned a smile when passed one, kind enough to come say hello and ask how college is treating us. All of us who volunteered that day had at least one lesson to take home. The conversations went from how they jumped from companies in a job hunt to settling down in San Francisco comfortably now. Their parting words:

“GCT is a level up for all of us. It is for you as well; it might not seem like it now, but you'll understand sooner or later."

And honestly? They were absolutely right.

Article prepared by: Sujithasri K (Civil 24-28)

On the 26th of July, GCTAA organized an annual alumni rally to connect all alumni together. The beauty of this event is that alumni from batches 1966 to 2021 participated. It didn't feel like a get-together; rather, it was like a family function where elders and youngsters joined and enriched the function with their presence.

A day began with warm smiles on each and every one's face. Each and every one greeted every other with a smile and shared their happiness. The young stars then started coming to meet the stars of GCT. As part of the event, the award 'Stars of GCT’ was given to 12 notable alumni for their achievements.

The event officially began with Tamizh Thai Vazhthu. Vice President Mr. Prasad; Secretary Ms. Narmadai; Joint Secretary Ms. Elamathi; and others lit the lamp as a mark of the beginning of the event. The vice president of GCTAA gave a welcome address welcoming all the GCTians back to their home. Then, GCTAA secretary Ms. Narmadai presented the annual report of events that was accomplished by the GCTAA association with the support of alumni. She gave a detailed report about the achievements of the GCTAA association that directly benefited the students, the rising stars of the GCT. Then, the treasurer of the GCTAA, Mr. Bradeesh Moorthy, presented the annual financial report of the GCTAA. With all the aspects of the statement, the alumni present on the stage approved the bill. Next, the stars of GCT, 2026, filled the stage like twinkling stars in the sky among the young rising stars.

All the stars of GCT were presented with a memento recognizing their accomplishments in their careers. The stars of GCT 2026 are

They were presented with mementos, and then the stars shared their experience with the future stars of GCT.

Dr. S. Narayanan, a former IIT professor, started first—he expressed his gratitude to all his professors who shaped him during his college days. Next, Dr. Vidhya Rani was felicitated. During her speech, she shared her professional experience and spoke about her commitment to address corporate social problems.

Thirdly, Mr. Ezil Buddhan, who is currently working at Indian telecommunication services, said that it was one of his emotional moments. He also recollected the role of the GCT campus in his early phase, which helped him shape his identity. He motivated the rising stars of GCT to find a purpose in life, emphasizing that, "Purpose will lead you the way forward." Also, he urged all the alumni to continue supporting GCT to improve its standards. Also, he wanted the students to be fearless and make life enjoyable.

Fourthly, Mr. Magesh Ethiraj, Director General of CDAC, was presented with the award. He felt that he was honored by his home. He shared his valuable experience working on PCB designs and hardware designs.

Fifthly, Mr. Poyyamozhi was honored with the Star of GCT award. He shared his experiences about college placements. He reflected on his journey which led him to China, quite a different path compared to others. He also emphasized the importance of financial education.

Sixthly, Mr. Khaleefathulla, Vice President at ABB, was honored with the Star of GCT award. He talked about his ventures. He pointed out the importance of industry players on campus to uplift the placement percentage as well as to reach high in careers.

Seventhly, Mr. Shanmugam was honored with the Star of GCT award. He shared his decision of choosing GCT Coimbatore over REC Trichy, which is now known as NIT Trichy. He shared his experience, starting his own institute to teach computer technology. He said that, parallelly, he learned many things and started the United Institute of Technology, which is now one of the premier educational institutes.

Next, Ms. Poonkuzhali, CTO of Varasakthi House financing, shared her gratitude towards GCT. She also shared her mantras, by which she lives—the first is don't chase external validation, and the second one is keep your word and stay true to it.

Next, Mr. Vivek Venkatraman, founder of Acheron, shared valuable insights with all the rising stars. He said that a right mentor will find you at the right time; catch them and reach high. He asked the students to spend time on the right things that truly matter. In the boom of the AI world, he urged everyone to make use of AI in a proper way.

Next, Ms. Gunaseeli, assistant conservator of the forest, was then presented with the award. She shared her group exam experiences and the role of Tamil Mandram and AAC in her life.

Finally, Mr. Suresh Kumar, Indian Information Service officer, was next felicitated with the award. He said he was very proud to be a small part of the event and remarked on GCT as a temple.

After the award presentation, GCTAA arranged for a cultural event to make the audience engage with fun.

At last, the event ended by singing the national anthem. This event was made even more special as the students connected and interacted with the alumni. The event met the purpose and went smoothly.

Stories

Open Page

The Myth of Merit: When NEET Mistakes Privilege for Potential

Open Page

Youth - The Future Pillars

Campus Pulse

The Journey of Team Screwtenizers: From Vision to the BAJA SAE INDIA Southern Section 2026 Podium

AlumSpace

1997 - 2001: One more time at GCT

AlumSpace

GCTAA Alumni Rally 2026