BACOLOD, Philippines – After an 11-month review, Niele Shem Bañas said he had expected to be on the Top 10 list of the 2024 licensure exams for electronics engineers. However, ranking first among those who topped the exams came as a surprise to him.

The 23-year-old Bañas from La Carlota City, Negros Occidental, topped this year’s electronics engineers’ licensure exams with a 91.80% rating.

The results were released on Wednesday, April 17, with 1,819 of 2,538 examinees passing the tests that were given across the country on April 11 and 12 by the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC).

Bañas told Rappler on Thursday, April 18, that he found the exams “quite easy” given his long preparation that included an 11-month online and in-person review.

The new electronics engineer, known as “Church Boy” in the village of Batuan in La Carlota, is an alumnus of the Technological University of the Philippines-Visayas (TUP-V) in Talisay City, 10 kilometers from Bacolod City.

The TUP-V ranked number one among the performing provincial institutions in the field of electronics engineering course.

The second in the brood of three, Bañas described himself as an “online gaming addict,” whose favorite is the League of Legends. Online games, he said, served as his stress reliever during his months of review for the exams and even in college.

Bañas said his father Rodel, who once worked in Canada, and his mother Jocelyn, a public school teacher in La Carlota, served as his inspiration especially when he went to college during the worst period of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The pandemic, he said, was the worst time for students and he will remember that as the most challenging period of his college days.

“I started college at the height of COVID-19, and that was the time I got hooked on online games. There were times when I was on the brink of failing some of my subjects,” he recalled.

One of his college professors, Ram Abeto, was also instrumental in motivating him when the teacher picked him to join the TUP-V quiz bee team that competed in Manila twice despite his low grades.

“It saved me, and I bounced back to prove my worth,” Bañas said.

His first choice was to be a mechanical engineer but he flunked the TUP-V’s ME test, but passed the one for electronics engineering.

“It’s quite a destiny,” Bañas told Rappler.

The new engineer said he plans to take a brief rest, and then prepare and take another test, this time, the Electronics Technicians’ Licensure Exams (ETLE) this October.

Given the chance, he said he wanted to work in an airport and get assigned to a control tower.Bañas said, “It’s not my dream job, but I am fascinated about it.” –Rappler.com