My प्रवेशः Story

Summary

I prepared for a few weeks and wrote the first DLP exam प्रवेशः! I experimented with my preparation styles and made a few plans. Then (almost exactly as expected) I threw the plans away and winged the whole thing. I am fairly confident I’ll pass, but this post goes over the process and my takeaways.

Initial Preparations

I obtained the book on July 6, 2026. I checked that there was an opportunity to write the exam in late August (for which I had to register by August 10, 2026). I told myself that I will go over the full book once before I register, just so that I can be confident. So, I started working through the chapters. They were interesting, organized, and I particularly enjoyed the cultural points and the small snippets of संस्कृतम् that I needed to by-heart like सुभाषितानि, सूक्तयः, श्लोकाः and प्रहेलिकाः.

First pass of the book, and Anki

I completed my first pass of the book on July 21, 2026. I was confident about my ability to pass the exam, and decided that I would register for it. In the meantime, I found a peer who wanted to build Anki Decks for the book, and so I helped him a bit with that. I was happy with the options it generated, but I wanted something more personal. So, I re-did the decks to suit my interests and removed the parts that I thought I didn’t need. I also gathered some of my notes into this side project of mine: टिप्पणि and I was pleased with my progress.

Plans and actual progress

Vyoma’s Pravesha course linked here is fantastic, and I found it useful to learn parts that I found confusing. Samskrita Bharati India has also put together videos linked here, and I watched a few of them. Since I was able to find a lot of past year papers, I decided I would write almost one exam every couple of days, and then go over my special notes regularly so that everything was thorough. I wrote 2.5 exams, and I already scored around 85% in the second one, so I got over-confident. In the end, I did none of these and completely dropped the ball after July end. I didn’t touch the book/notes again until the day before the exam.

Examination

My objective with doing DLP was that it will help me get serious about the things I needed to memorize. What I ended up doing was putting together a last minute cramming session, and I felt I did reasonably well in the exam. In my defense, the exam mostly tested my practical knowledge rather than what I may have learnt by-heart. So, I actually enjoyed the writing process (except for the hands getting pained by writing for 3 hours after so many years). In the end, I felt happy, but also a little annoyed that I could have taken it a bit more seriously.

Takeaways and Future steps.

I am going to start preparing for परिचयः, and I will also focus on some प्रवेशः portions in the process. I am hoping to write the exam in the end of November, but it remains to be seen whether I’ll get there by then. I have until the end of October to take a call. I also want to seriously gather the new words (vocabulary), the culture points, the sayings and grammar tables and consolidate them into Anki Decks and TippaNi posts. My results should come in mid October, I’ll post an update here when I hear back!