Three failed NEET attempts. No JEE rank. Years of uncertainty. For Sanjay B, the road to a career was nothing like he had imagined. Today, he works as a Data Scientist in Pune, but before reaching there, he spent years battling disappointment, job rejections and self-doubt. Sharing his journey on LinkedIn, Sanjay said the period after Class 12 nearly broke him. Between March 2020 and November 2021, he stayed away from social media and his mobile phone, focusing only on his studies. “Festivals passed, weather didn’t matter. I studied through everything—alone, exhausted, and scared,” he wrote. His first two NEET attempts in 2021 and 2022 shattered his confidence. He said he struggled to tell his parents how he felt because they were hoping he would secure a government medical seat. As his friends moved on to college, he felt left behind. “I felt left behind and like a burden. But I didn’t quit,” he wrote.With six to seven months left before another attempt, Sanjay started looking for work. He said he faced several rejections, including for a packing job at BigBasket. After attending five interviews, he finally got a job in sales at SBI Cards, where he continued working while preparing for the exam.
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Sanjay said balancing work and studies was not easy. He carried books to the office, studied during work breaks, took unpaid leave before the examination and changed his preparation strategy. His efforts helped him score more than 450 marks in his third NEET attempt.Despite the improved score, personal financial constraints stopped him from making another attempt. Instead, he enrolled in the IIT Madras BS in Data Science programme and cleared the qualifier in October 2022. Today, he works as a Data Scientist in Pune.Explaining why he decided to speak about his journey, Sanjay said many students had asked him about his NEET experience and the IIT Madras programme. He believes students should know there are other options if things do not go as planned.He also urged NEET and JEE aspirants not to judge themselves based on an entrance exam. “Your worth is not defined by an exam,” he wrote. He encouraged students to talk to someone if they are struggling and reminded them that “your story isn’t over.”
