Three failed attempts at NEET. There are no JEE grades. Years of uncertainty. For Sanjay B, the career path was not what he imagined. Today, he works as a data scientist in Pune, but before getting there, he spent years battling disappointment, job rejection, and self-doubt. Sharing his experience on LinkedIn, Sanjay said the period after Grade 12 nearly broke him. From March 2020 to November 2021, he stayed away from social media and mobile phones and only focused on studying. “The festival was over and the weather didn’t matter. I studied everything – loneliness, exhaustion, fear,” he wrote. His first two NEET attempts in 2021 and 2022 shattered his confidence. He said it was difficult for him to tell his parents how he felt because they wanted him to get a government medical seat. When his friends entered college, he felt left behind. “I felt left behind, like a burden. But I didn’t give up,” he wrote.With six to seven months to go before trying again, Sanjay started looking for work. He said he had been rejected several times, including for a packaging job at BigBasket. After five interviews, he finally found a sales job at SBI Cards and continued working while preparing for the exam.
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Balancing work and studies is not easy, Sanjay said. He brought books to the office, studied during work breaks, took unpaid leave before exams, and changed his preparation strategies. His hard work helped him score over 450 marks in his third NEET attempt.Although his grades improved, personal financial constraints prevented him from trying again. Instead, he enrolled in the Bachelor of Science in Data Science program at IIT Madras and cleared the preliminaries in October 2022. Today, he works as a data scientist in Pune.Explaining why he decided to talk about his journey, Sanjay said many students asked him about his NEET experience and IIT Madras programme. He thinks students should know there are options if things don’t go according to plan.He also urged NEET and JEE aspirants not to judge themselves based on the entrance exams. “Your worth is not determined by a test,” he wrote. He encouraged students to talk to someone when they are having trouble, reminding them that “your story is not over yet.”
