Divye Sachdev

As a child, I was not always confident and lacked a sense of belief in myself. Don’t get me wrong, I was a decent student, however I wasn’t committed to becoming the best or even motivated enough to get any better.

At the tender age of 9, my mother got me enrolled into UCMAS. It seemed dull at first, and within a couple of months, I was all but ready to quit. Luckily, I was graced with teachers who realized some sort of potential in me and prevented me from quitting.

I eventually sat for my first ever UCMAS competition and completely blew it. Now that I look back upon it, this was an extremely important moment in my life. I knew I could be better, and for the first time I wanted to be work towards being the best. My hard work reaped rewards when I won three consecutive State Level, National and International Championships. This gave me a great deal of confidence in my own ability and gave me the belief that with hard work, I could achieve anything I set my mind on.
Today as I work in one the largest investment banks in the world, having passed out of a premier IIM at the young age of 21, I can look back at my time with UCMAS as one of the key moments in my life.

People wonder that UCMAS is all about getting better at numbers, but I can tell from experience that it is much more.

Here I’d like to quote my favorite teacher and mentor, Amrita ma’am – “A brain is like a knife. As you sharpen a knife, it gets better at cutting all sorts of fruits and vegetables, not just one of them. Similarly, a sharp mind gets better at all sorts of things including but not limited to Math and numbers.”

Divye Sachdev
Investment Banker Deutsche Bank.