He had aimed for a spot in the top 100 of the National
Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET). When the NEET (UG) results came out on
Saturday, the entire Sinha Chaudhuri family was delighted.
“My father and I
were checking the results. I was still searching for my rank when I heard him
scream. I certainly did not expect a top 20 rank,” laughs Rachit Sinha
Chaudhuri, who has come 16th on the national merit list for admission to
undergraduate medical courses.
That makes him the state topper as well. He has
scored 670 out of 720. Earlier, he got 94.2 per cent (best of five) in his CBSE
Class XII examination. The resident of Salua, near Chinar Park, in Rajarhat,
made a strategic shift to Hariyana Vidya Mandir in Class XI. “Till Class X
since Lower KG, he was in DPS Newtown. But he wanted to sit for NEET. Since the
CBSE syllabus is more aligned with NEET, it made more sense to switch from
ISC,” said his father, Sirshendu.
“The textbooks for NEET and CBSE are the
same,” Rachit explained. Rachit’s father always inspired him to become a
doctor. One overwhelming reason was his grandmother suffering from paralysis
during his childhood. “Baba used to say: ‘Doctor holey Thammi ke bhalo kore
dekhte parbi’. I knew that would be my chosen path since the time I was in
Class IV.”
He liked both biology and botany in school. “I have a fascination
for the human body. Botany has some career options but those do not appeal to
me. Once I finish MBBS, I can figure out if I want to go for research,” he
says.
Rachit had enrolled in a private coaching centre, which offered hybrid
classes, besides going for private tuitions for chemistry and physics. “I also
got help from school. Multiple sources of teaching meant I got a wider
perspective on how the same problem can be solved. I used to absorb and retain
a topic while it was being taught in class.
That way, I did not have to revise
the same thing at home,” he says. He used to try to put in eight to 10 hours of
study outside of tuition and school. “I had weekend classes at the coaching
centre. So sometimes it went up to 14 hours.”
One person his father mentions with gratitude is “BB sir” —
his physics teacher Bishwajit Barnwal. His coaching centre in Kasba had become
Rachit’s second home as the teacher picked him for special attention.
“He would
spend 10 hours or more twothree days a week in the coaching centre’s practice
room appearing for mock tests and getting doubts cleared. BB sir did not charge
extra for this. He also monitored his mock test scores and his mental
well-being,” he said of the teacher who had even accompanied Rachit to the NEET
examination centre at Hare School, along with his parents.
In the run-up to the
finals, the entire family stayed away from social gatherings. And Rachit
completely logged out of social media, so much so that his Instagram account
got deactivated. “They must have thought it was a fake account as I rarely used
it and was friends with so few people,” the 18-year-old says, adding with a
laugh that his followers numbered less than 10.
Once the NEET examination was
out of the way, he created a new account to get back into social circulation.
He also has time now for his hobbies — cooking and baking. The storybooks are also
out of the racks.
Rachit was doing well in the preparatory tests at his
coaching centres. He used to weigh his chances on the basis of the scores he
got in his mock tests. “On the basis of my scores then, it seemed I would get
AIIMS Rishikesh.”
But with the rank he has achieved, he can dream bigger. “I
think I should be getting AIIMS Delhi now. They have close to 40 seats for
general category students,” he says.
He is not keen to name any local hospital
among his options during coun- selling. “I have been studying in Bengal all my
life. I want to explore the world outside now,” he says with a shrug.