‘Don’t panic; make good notes,’ says Divya Manhas who cleared NEET-UG 2024 in first attempt

Completing her Class 12 education in 2024 from DAV Centenary Public School, Pathankot, managing school assignments, coaching and self-study was a difficult task for her. “I took the evening batch of Allen so that after classes concluded, I could relax for a while, and have dinner. After that I had a few hours at night to revise, and if I missed it due to some reason then I could use morning hours for revision of lectures,” said Divya.

Even though Divya has attended online classes during the Covid pandemic, she preferred attending live lectures rather than recording. Divya belives that the live classes were more helpful “as they were interactive and I used to pay more attention to the classes.”

While revising and preparing, she realised that she needed to find an easy way to memorise facts and concepts. “For me, NCERT was more than sufficient for subjects such as Biology and chemistry, particularly for topics like organic and inorganic topics and the coaching module concise those concepts and learnings. For Physics and Physical Chemistry, I completely relied on the coaching module, but yes I made notes for important formulas concisely,” said Divya Manhas.

NEET UG 2024 was not all rosy, she claimed, but even in those tough questions, she tried to keep calm and not lose her cool, even if she could not figure out a few questions. “In my set of the Chemistry portion, the first few questions of the section were difficult, so I started attempting questions from mid. This helped me build a flow and once that flow was there, I got my confidence back and was able to answer the difficult questions too,” she recalled.

As the NEET UG 2024 preparation phase was stressful, Divya spent more time talking to her family and friends, and praying to God, which helped her manage the stress. In addition to this, avoiding silly mistakes and mock tests was the greatest supporter of Divya during her NEET UG preparation.

While Divya will now be starting her MBBS at AIIMS, she is already planning her next step too. She aims to clear NEET PG and earn a specialised degree after earning her MBBS degree from AIIMS.