Jammu: Jammu boy, Tanmay Gupta has aced this year’s National Eligibility Cum Entrance Test (NEET), scoring a 720 out of 720 to secure a seat for medicine in the country’s best institute. He has shared the top honours with two students, setting a record.
The 18-year-old told News 18 that he literally danced with joy and jumped around the room when his father called him to break the news that he had topped the prestigious exams.
“Before this, I kept on looking for a mail and site but it showed nothing. The site would have been under strain and perhaps crashed due to the rush but when Dad called up, I jumped around. That I had topped .. took time to sink in,” he was quoted as saying. “I must have gone crazy with excitement.”
A meritorious student all along, Gupta said he took a decision to shift base from Jammu to Delhi after he passed Class X to get a better education and coaching and also to compete with a bigger and brighter pool of students.
“I told my father that moving out of Jammu would make me eligible for more seats for medicine,” he said and “dad agreed and supported my decision.”
“I have studied in Delhi for the last two years. I also took coaching from a private institution there. The exposure and company of the fellow students helped me a good deal,” he told News18.
His father, Dr Akshay Gupta, a dentist who works in government, said “we allowed him to move out on noticing he was keen to expose himself to a better academic climate. “It was his choice but we kept on encouraging him. He is our only child and we kept motivating him by shuttling regularly from Jammu to Delhi,” he said.
Tanmay said he was expecting good results but scoring full marks was a surprise. He said he has not been a bookworm in the last two years but worked with a proper plan. “Four to five hours of self-study in the evening after the coaching is all I did but I was following a routine,” he said. “I would set small goals in the morning and achieve them by the evening. I am not a night person and would conclude the studies by 10 pm. So there was no strain the next day,” he informed.
He said there would be times when he got bored with studies and he would either go for swimming or meet his friends. “It would refresh me and I could return to the books,” he said.
“Lapses in concentration can be avoided by reading a book or watching television. I watched Olympic games in between.”
Gupta wants to do his MBBS degree now and will decide on what to take for specialisation later. “I am probably going to get admission in AIIMS, Delhi and that is an honour,” he said, adding “he is not enamoured by civil services and bureaucracy.” “My first and only interest is to see myself as a doctor.”