I was once a NEET aspirant. Here’s what the Kota Factory doesn’t tell you.

In a recent rewatch of the Netflix show Kota Factory, I saw my own adolescence replaying in black and white. The cramped classrooms, exhausted faces, and friendships forged through trauma bonding looked queasily familiar. In the show, teachers told students that cracking JEE-NEET-CLAT is the pinnacle of success, but the finale shows us how the system exhausts our brightest students, making them question their worth every step of the way.

Kota Factory: a black and white mirror

The show hit me hard and stirred up old memories of the times I considered myself a failure. But I never related to any of the characters. I wasn’t confident like the toppers, nor carefree like the backbenchers. I knew I had the drive and the calibre to achieve a good rank, but I also couldn’t make sense of a single word I was supposed to cram.

My alma mater’s in-house counsellor, who chose to remain anonymous, believes that most students who felt shortchanged by the process were those who jumped into the JEE-NEET prep without understanding the depth of the challenge.

“Students were just told that engineering and medicine were the ways to go if they wanted a comfortable life, they were herded towards it like sheep. We only show students the endgame and keep them in the blind about what it takes to crack the exam. In fact, we blindside them into thinking that cracking JEE is it, we don’t even tell them what comes after. That is why they feel cheated,” she said.

In school, my friends and I were sticklers for rules, but always lagged in ranks. In retrospect, the system of measuring worth by numbers had pushed us into an early burnout, and for some of us, a mental breakdown.

The counsellor remembered that several students would come up to her with the “intention of leaving the science stream”, but parents and teachers would often advise against it. “All they saw was a racehorse about to give up before the finish line,” she said.

Such is the quagmire of competitive examination preparation: When students have the realisation that they are in over their heads, they continue to be dragged down by the pressures of society, afraid that they would be mocked for steering away from a path most consider as supreme.

In fact, performance pressure, parental expectations, and competitive environments were found to be among the several factors for academic stress in a recent study of over 300 students appearing for high-stakes exams. The research has been published in the American Journal of Psychiatric Rehabilitation. It also notes that academic stress can directly impact the self-esteem of students. A 2024 study had also found that stress around such competitive exams comes from lengthy syllabi, time management concerns, and fear of failing, among others, which in turn can cause difficulty in concentrating or problem-solving, self-doubts, lack of motivation, and even feelings of helplessness.

The myth of Jeetu Bhaiya

In the Kota Factory, Jeetu Bhaiya is portrayed to be an ideal teacher — a man who is your ‘agony aunt’ in moments of such stress. He saw students for their own unique abilities, visited their accommodation when they were depressed, and was essentially a fan favourite in the series. However, Kota doesn’t have any saviours, and Jeetu Bhaiya doesn’t exist in real life.

Jeetu Bhaiya seemed like the dream teacher when I was fresh out of school, but as a grown-up, I saw how his character was morally grey at best. The teacher, for all his compassion, wasn’t really challenging the system. He was making the same toxic grind look noble for his students with funny quips. He espoused the same tenets as everyone else: sit and study for 12 hours, see IIT as a salvation, and sacrifice their teen years in the name of success.

When Vaibhav, the protagonist, fails to clear the examination, he is never told to relax, breathe, and maybe introspect if he can survive such a competitive environment. The show ends with Jeetu giving Vaibhav a pep talk, prompting him to drop a year and once again live in a pressurised environment that led to his poor performance in the first place.

While the show should have prompted aspirants to reconsider toxic studying habits, it ends up giving the same tired message — it’s either IIT or nothing.

Who is the real winner?

Of course, some students credit coaching centres with instilling discipline, and social media is full of stories of those who defied the odds to land at the IITs. Accounts of students who adapted and now thrive in that environment are undeniably inspiring, but we risk distorting the picture if we glorify only these successes.

Shows like Kota Factory fail to tell us what comes after the JEE-NEET showdown. We see Jeetu market IIT as a shiny prize that you win after breaking your back for an arguably outdated entrance examination. But he never mentions that another fight awaits when you step into a highly competitive space like an IIT.

For instance, Kaushik, a second-year Energy Engineering student at IIT Delhi, said the gruelling entrance exam preparation had done little to ready him for the reality of life at IIT. “I was always told that JEE is just a trailer of what comes for students in IIT, but it is not even one per cent accurate. In my coaching days, it was all about sitting at my desk with a book for over 10 hours. Here, teachers extensively urge us for practical knowledge. It’s the only way to understand what we are studying,” he said, adding, “IIT should only be pursued if engineering is your actual passion. For someone whose strength lies purely in exam performance, the environment here can feel mismatched.”

When Kaushik dropped a year before he got into IIT Delhi, he thought that an extra year of preparation would give him a leg up among the freshers. He couldn’t have been more wrong. “I was almost 20 years old when I got into IIT, while my batchmates were 18, some even 17. Coaching institutes told me that I had more knowledge, more understanding, but when I started attending classes, I realised I was misled. I had never felt more intimidated in my life. And when I made friends with some of the younger students, they told me they felt intimidated by me. Essentially, in a room full of winners, we all felt like losers,” he added.

Kaushik’s statement made me think: Who is the real winner of this system? Students who don’t clear exams like JEE and NEET end up questioning their worth for years to come. Those who do are often struggling with burnout and a lack of social skills.

For me, the real winners in this rat race are coaching centres that exploit students, mentally and financially, and use their ranks as an advertisement, marking imaginary success. And the parents, who get to cash in on social capital after their child clears these exams.

This is not an argument against pursuing engineering or medicine, but a plea for systemic change that recognises the very real distress students face and responds to it with empathy and support. It is an invitation for parents to have honest, ongoing conversations about what their children truly want, to back them if they wish to take a different path, and for teachers to validate and nurture diverse career choices rather than a single, narrow track. Above all, it is a reminder to students that success is not defined by a single exam, and that it is worth listening to what genuinely excites and sustains them.

At 26, I still carry the echoes of sleepless nights and tight timetables. While the exam season is far behind me, the memories are a sharp reminder that success was never ours — it belonged to everyone but the students.