Favourite Student - Story of a NEET Topper, but not the one you will find in newspaper ads

The NEET scam recently has brought the vagaries of the maligned Indian Education System to light again. Supreme Court, the parliament, and the CBI have all been involved.

The social media and tea-time conversations are abuzz with how rotten our system is. And I have seen the ugliest of remarks about our education system surface again. As a result, I couldn't find a better time to write this post about my favorite student—"the NEET Topper", but not the kind whose photograph you see on the front page newspaper ads.

Mehu (Name changed) approached me at the beginning of her class 12. At that time she was struggling with physics with her mock test scores lingering around 30/180 or 40/180 in the physics mock tests conducted on the class 11 syllabus. My first impression of her was that she wouldn't fit into my classes for two reasons:

1. I was running a class 12 batch for CBSE Board preparation while she was aspiring for NEET.

2. The other students in my batch were ahead of her and she was bound to find it hard to cope with them.

But she still went ahead with the enrollment and within a month proved all my skepticism about her wrong. In 1 month itself, she superseded her batchmates in my class and focussed on the conceptual aspects of physics learning, that she could apply in solving NEET problems. After that, she joined my class 11 CBSE batch too, as she realized that her class 11 physics fundamentals were weak and she needed to work on both class 11 and class 12 physics to get into decent shape for the NEET exam. Now this is where I saw her tenacity and determination. Doing both class 11 and class 12 batch with me meant spending about 10-11 hrs a week in my live classes and about 4-5 hrs a week doing hw. Managing this day in and day out with her junior college where she was engaged from 8 am to 5 pm was truly awe-inspiring. She stuck to this schedule religiously for a year, that too during COVID times when the classes were strictly online. Ultimately she ended up with the NEET physics score of 105/180 and overall NEET Score of 560/720. The magnitude of her turnaround can be gauged from the remarkable progress made in a year. From 40/180 in physics in the one-year syllabus to 105/180 in the full two-year syllabus-based NEET exam.

Her achievement had a huge impact on me. In early 2020 I stepped out of my startup (HumbleSchool Private Limited) to restart my teaching profession. I was still grappling with the failures/learnings my startup vigil gave me and was a bit low on confidence. Add to it the question marks around my teaching methods, which stressed learning concepts rather than shortcuts and tricks, and question marks on my mentorship which advocated hard work and discipline over the concept of smart and efficient learning (never got my head around that). Mehu joined my class in March 2020 and was my student till May 2021. Her determination gave me immense inspiration during that phase and the final outcome went a long way in restoring confidence in my methods.

Coming back to the NEET exam scam, undeniably something fishy has happened there. Add to that the abundant misuse of reservations, and it paints a very sorry picture. But we cannot deny the fact that there are thousands of stories of undeterred determination and perseverance like Mehu which exams like NEET create every year. Irrespective of ultimate NEET or JEE scores or the college they get into a bright future awaits them, as now they can carry and apply the process of hard work they have learned anywhere they want. The need of the hour is to celebrate these achievers and give them their due share of respect. It's the responsibility of the coaching centers, schools, and society to encourage not just the toppers with 720/720 scores, but also such achievers who showed remarkable improvement and resilience during their journey.

We have a vast population competing for limited resources, so fighting for these resources will always be tough. Quality education here will never be easy. Opportunities in various fields will also not be the same. More often than not students will have to set aside their passion in one domain for better opportunities in the other fields. But let's appreciate and be proud of the character that gets built while the students go through the grinds of our education system, and be kind and more respectful to these fighters who have taken that path.