Three failed NEET attempts. No JEE rank. Years of uncertainty. For Sanjay B, the path to a career was nothing like he had imagined. Today, he works as a Data Scientist in Pune, but before he got here, he spent years battling disappointment, job rejections and self-doubt. Sharing his journey on LinkedIn, Sanjay said that the period after Class 12 almost broke him. Between March 2020 and November 2021, he distanced himself from social media and his phone, focusing only on his studies. “Festivals passed, the time didn’t matter. I studied for everything – alone, tired, and scared,” he wrote. His first two NEET attempts in 2021 and 2022 shattered his confidence. He said he struggled to tell his parents what he felt because they hoped he would secure a government medical post. When his friends moved on to college, he felt left out. “I feel abandoned and like a burden. But I will not abandon,” he wrote.With six to seven months left before another attempt, Sanjay began looking for work. He said he faced several rejections, including for a packaging job at BigBasket. After attending five interviews, he finally got a job in sales at SBI Cards, where he continued to work while preparing for the exam.
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Sanjay said that balancing work and studies was not easy. He brought books to the office, studied during work breaks, took unpaid leave before the exam 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 prevented him from making another attempt. Instead, he enrolled in the IIT Madras BS in Data Science program and cleared the qualifier in October 2022. Today, he works as a Data Scientist in Pune.Explaining why he decided to talk about his journey, Sanjay said that 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 don’t go as planned.He also advised NEET and JEE aspirants not to judge 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 is not over.”
