Can an Average Student Crack NEET?

Hey there, future doctors, and their super-supportive parents! Welcome! Today, we’re going to tackle a burning question that crosses every student’s mind: Can an ‘average’ student crack NEET?

Why do we define ourselves as average? Why do we think that this question is important? Let us discuss this question and decide if you can crack NEET. 

What Does Being Average Mean?

First, let’s talk about the meaning of an “average student”. From what I understand, I think you mean that in your childhood, in school, you never came first, second, or third. You passed most exams but sometimes you failed too.

Maybe you were not an ‘all-rounder’, you could barely even study. Your parents used to shout at you to get your work done, you had a bad relationship with your coaching teachers too. Never felt smart, never felt like the toppers.

If your idea of average is any of the ones mentioned above then the first thing to do is, get this in your mind, that was school, and that time has passed. 

But then again, maybe your idea of average is around the NEET preparation phase. You can’t solve all those high-end questions that the class topper is doing. Being average could also mean that it takes you time to understand things when you study.

Okay, I don’t know what your meaning of average is, and I don’t know what being average means, all I know is what it doesn’t mean – it doesn’t mean LOSER. It does not mean that you are not capable of learning or that you cannot compete in an exam like NEET.

An average student’s NEET journey

Let us understand what defines an average student’s NEET journey. Whether you are a ‘topper’ or an ‘average’ student, throughout the NEET journey, you will keep telling yourself – ‘NEET is very difficult to crack. Physics is impossible to understand? What is organic chemistry even? Why am I doing this? And I am not good enough.’ These thoughts are very normal, there is no way you can avoid these thoughts, you can only deal with them once they are already there. All the self-doubt and insecurities are a part of every NEET aspirant’s journey. Even AIR 1 will agree. 

The problem arises when one group of students starts comparing themselves to the other group of ‘toppers’ and starts feeling insignificant in comparison. The ‘I’m not smart enough’ changes into ‘I’m not like those toppers’. The ‘I can’t crack NEET’ changes to ‘Only these people can crack NEET.’ 

This feeling is much worse than just plain self-doubt. A feeling of unworthiness in comparison to someone else makes you feel like you are not made for it. Instead of the normal solutions to doubts, which are ‘I will work a little harder, I will sit down and try to understand my state of mind and then change it.’ The solution starts to become, ‘I should drop out, I should look for other fields, this is something that only the smartest people can do.’

What happens with average students? 

The insecurities take over. And you are not capable of cracking NEET anymore. This happens because you stop trying to identify the flaws in your preparation and blindly follow what the toppers are doing. You copy someone else’s routine plan. You try to be someone you are not. 

Let me give you an example: I have not solved HC Verma entirely. I had tried to solve it for mechanics, I could get a few questions done but most of them seemed impossible. I felt very bad about it and got very insecure about my preparation. Then, one day, I sat down and tried to understand why I am solving HC Verma in the first place. After a lot of thought I understood that I was doing it just because the toppers in my class did it. They scored much better with it, yes. But it only impacted my performance negatively. I could not even score as much as I was scoring before. This is when I realized the pressure of being better than the best, this is where I realized the importance of being yourself and working on yourself with your own methods, finding solutions to your own problem. 

This is when I stopped solving HC Verma completely. Yes, I couldn’t solve 2-3 very difficult Physics questions in the NEET exam. But you know what? I still got a good enough score because I could solve 40+ questions. It got me an MBBS seat. Had I continued trying to do something I couldn’t do, I wouldn’t be here. 

So what do average students have to do? 

We just have to understand the difference between getting inspiration and copying. You can get inspired by the toppers to work harder but you cannot just blindly copy whatever they are doing. If someone has completed the syllabus with ease and wants to get into more difficult questions just for fun, good for them. We cannot simply skip the basics and then cry about not being able to do what they are doing. 

Aim for a safe score, aim for a doable score. Understand where your limits are and how much you can do. There is no point in overestimating yourself and getting into something that is not even as important. The NEET syllabus has been drafted for average students and the paper is mostly of easy/moderate difficulty. It has been a very long time since a difficult paper has been set for NEET. 

Conclusion:

We average students sabotage our preparation with our insecurities and inability to accept that we are average. We will take a little more time to understand things, we need to be smart about our strategy. We get so scared that we start imitating people, and we lose ourselves in the process. This makes it very difficult to find our identities outside the exam, we are left as copies of other people. We tend to forget that success does not have any copyright, it is for everyone who works hard enough to get it. 

Our strength lies in our ability to accept our weaknesses and be able to strategize keeping our weaknesses in mind. Our strength lies in accepting that we are average ‘So what, if I’m average’ but not letting that stop us ‘I will crack NEET regardless. Yes, average students like us can crack NEET, I’m sure. We just need to work a little harder and dream a little bigger than the toppers.

Comment ‘I can do it.’ if you want to make it happen.

So, here’s to the ones that dream. 

Read next: Tips for an AVERAGE student to crack NEET