Common Hurdles to Avoid While Preparing for the NEET-PG Exam

Exams can sometimes become very overwhelming. There’s a sense of pressure and anxiety among candidates that might overpower their confidence and knowledge. This ultimately leads to hurdles that need to be avoided while preparing for the NEET-PG Exam. 

The NEET-PG exam is one of the country’s most challenging competitive exams, where millions of students fight to grab a few hundred seats at the top medical colleges, therefore, the feeling of such pressure is justified. The objective of this article is to help medical students like you thoroughly understand these obstacles associated with preparing for the NEET exam and help you to deal with them successfully.

Top 10  hurdles that most students are likely to face during their preparation for the NBE NEET-PG exam – 

1. Don’t rush into the syllabus 
2. Improper planning and scheduling
3. Not following the timetable
4. Poor or no self-evaluation
5. Escaping difficult problems
6. Sticking to unhelpful learning methodologies 
7. Neglecting the syllabus 
8. Going through too many books 
9. Not taking enough mock tests 
10. Zero prior practice

When you talk about competitive exams, stress, anxiety, or expectations automatically get added to your checklist, as you prepare for it. These external factors lead to nervousness, pushing the students towards an increased chance of messing up their exams. This can ultimately cost them the precious opportunity that they will have waited for all their life.

Looking at the level of competition, you need to remember that every mark counts, and each answer can affect how your life in the immediate future turns out to be; hence it is extremely important to remember your strengths, figure out your weaknesses, and clear your doubts.

Before kick-starting this list of hurdles, there’s one thing you must be mindful of – Mistakes are a part of life, and serve as a stepping stone to achievement and success. These mistakes teach us the importance of success and shape ourselves in a way that we become unafraid of failure.

Without further ado, let’s dive in –  

Don’t rush into the syllabus 

Before blindly diving into your exam preparation, try to grasp the core concepts that the examination might test you with. Try to find the answers to questions like:

• What does the exam pattern look like?
• How many overall questions are there?
• What is the number of questions from each topic?
• Which of the topics are more important?
• What is the total time you need to allot?
• Is there any negative marking involved?
• What are the essential things to take for the exam?

Once you answer these questions successfully, you shall get a clear understanding of what the NEET exam looks like. Try to pay close attention to books and the study material of your choice.

Improper planning and scheduling

Another hurdle to avoid while preparing for the NEET PG exam is to ensure that you have a proper plan and a schedule in place to help you achieve success. Considering how challenging it tends to be, unplanned strategies and schedules can take you closer to failure. A lack of planning can cause serious impediments to one’s study plan. Let us list some quick tips for you below to have a proper plan & strategy if you wish to crack the NEET exam – 

• Plan your day wisely
• Devote maximum hours to study
• Extract time for revision – daily
• Prioritize focusing on your weaker areas, give more weightage to the previous years’ question papers, among others. 

When you have decided to attempt the NEET PG exam, make sure you design a well-structured timetable. Remember to align your strategy to the idea that the first shot at the exam is the only one you have. A proper plan can also help you to strike a balance between important and less important concepts so that you’re equally focused upon all the areas of study, but especially upon the areas that you are confident about. 

Note: Try not to follow schedules, plans, or strategies made for other people. Instead, create your timetable, and stick to it, to score closer to your targeted mark. 

Not following the timetable

While preparing for the NEET PG exam, what’s the worst thing you can do? Perhaps, not sticking to the timetable that you have created is worse than not studying enough for the exam. Time tables can make or break your study preparation. Here’s what you might want to do –  

• Create and stick to a realistic timetable. 
• Build a routine that can soon turn into a habit 
• Make room for short breaks in your timetable

With an optimized timetable, you will have a more structured way of learning, understanding, and grasping your studies, making the burden of the exam much easier to bear. While it may not seem as easy on the first go, having a timetable can open doors to your success in no time. Most students preparing for the NEET PG exam take time to create a strong timetable that will successfully enhance their concentration level. However, with an all-rounded routine like we suggested, you can: 

• Finish the syllabus on or before time
• Have time for regular revision
• Have plenty of extra time for mock exams
• Evade any last-minute panic that might affect your final exam 

After all, you don’t want time to be the reason your dreams fall flat when aiming to clear such an important examination. 

Poor or no Self-evaluation

Another major hurdle to avoid while preparing for the NEET exam is not evaluating your preparation by yourself. Every exam comes with its own set of challenges that need to be evaluated and managed to achieve success. NEET is one such exam where self-assessment and objective assessment are two of the most important factors that can pave your way to success. 

One of the most common statements that we tend to hear from NEET aspirants is, “I knew this answer, I selected the right one, but I changed my mind at the very last minute.” This shows the lack of confidence, even with sufficient preparation, and above all, your lack of self-evaluation.

Mistakes are an inevitable part of life, and everyone is bound to make different kinds of mistakes. Rather than justifying your past mistakes, be more alert when you analyze the mistake yourself. Take time to point them out. Be honest with yourself. If you treat yourself with strictness during the evaluation process, you may be able to easily cross the hurdle of achieving success in the NEET exam. 

Escaping Difficult Problems

The tendency to ignore chapters more difficult for us, or ignore concepts we are not fond of is in-built in most people. This can become a significant issue when attempting to write competitive exams like the NEET. Medical students need to remember that ignoring an issue will keep them from learning something new that might have helped them in the future. Instead – 

• Invest extra time to understand a concept you don’t 
• Work on your weakness
• Ask mentors, peers, or experts, such as e-Gurukul, for any clarifications you might need 
• Watch videos created by our experts to understand the concepts thoroughly

You may believe that the more you study, the better you will score. However, this may not hold in all cases; instead, the more you focus on whatever you are studying, the better the chances are at cracking the exam – and to do this, the better you can concentrate, the more topics and concepts you will be able to cover. 

Take guidance from our experts at E-Gurukul whenever you need to, because relying on authentic sources and learning from 3D videos by experts will always assist the journey of your preparation in comprehending, visualizing, and connecting the dots to grasp the concepts better. 

Sticking to old learning methodologies 

When the examination pattern has changed, and the mode of the exam has changed as well, then why should you stick to an older model of preparation for the NEET-PG exam? 

Gone are the days when the concept of learning 24*7 would fetch a student maximum marks or the desired percentile. Today, learning methodologies have taken a 180-degree turn, and instead of working hard, students are expected to work smartly, to perform wisely, and to understand concepts to the extent that they grasp the underlying foundation of a concept, which will ultimately help them achieve not only the desired rank but also knowledge for future practice. 

The days of burning the midnight oil and devoting one’s life to study preparations before the exam are seen as archaic today; instead, students are recommended to have good, regulated sleep schedules, short breaks in between their study sessions, and are encouraged to take up hobbies alongside. These activities will help you to retain information and concepts a lot more easily, and stress you out less rather than simply spending time mugging up all the information. 

Neglecting the syllabus 

Another major hurdle to avoid while preparing for the NEET exam is to dedicatedly focus on the syllabus rather than dissecting concepts that might not be a part of the NEET syllabus. When you first see the enormous NEET-PG syllabus, it is bound to make you panic. In a hurry to cover the entire syllabus, most students tend to study irrelevant subjects which happens primarily because of:  

• Lack of knowledge of the subjects
• Unclear concepts
• Distracted concentration  

To avoid such a scenario, and keep yourself from becoming clueless while writing the NEET exam, make sure you stick to your syllabus properly. Instead of rushing to a conclusion, try to focus on the entire chapter from the syllabus as questions can come from anywhere, not just from the areas you like. 

Many candidates make the error of avoiding studying a major chunk of the chapters from the syllabus, and instead, just jump to the conclusion and the final coursework. Instead, treat each point equally, and focus on what the concept comprises. 

Too many books 

Believe it or not, but piling up books and reference materials never guarantees success. Many candidates tend to fail in their exam preparation because they focus on every book or resource material out there. This can lead to chaos that ultimately becomes a primary reason for failure in the exams. To prevent a mix up of knowledge, or give rise to unnecessary confusion, it is recommended you follow the 2-step process, which is: 

• Sticking to books directly from the syllabus 
• Referring to reference material supplementary to the syllabus 

Not taking enough mock tests 

It is difficult to secure a higher rank in NEET PG without taking enough mock tests. However, why are mock tests so important? They help to prepare candidates for the actual exam, and help them to get familiar with various aspects of the NEET PG exam, such as –

• Time management 
• Covering the exam pattern 
• Deploying effective strategies while writing the exam 
• Getting a hang of the question pattern
• Understanding the pressure one might encounter on d-day 

Mock tests help students evaluate their learning process, and help in perform better during the real test. Mock tests help students to get a taste of the final exam pattern, helping them to build a strategy for their exam, improve time management, and finally give them a chance to evaluate their preparation. 

Zero prior practice 

Ever heard about the concept of an exam before an exam? Well, practicing the complete NEET PG exam a few days before the final exam day can help boost your confidence, and display great results during the actual test. 

Solving past years’ question papers can help you to train your minds, and boost your confidence as you near the preparations for the final day. If you are serious about the NEET PG exam, follow the following strategy –  

• Try to take 2-3 exams weekly in order to build a proper understanding of all the major concepts.
• Analyze mistakes through self-evaluation, work upon them, and learn manage time effectively via them 
• Choose a proper time slot to take the exam, and make sure there are no disturbances or distractions around you.   

For any student aiming to crack a national-level examination like the NEET PG, where several medical graduates compete with each other to grab the highly prestigious seats, it becomes imperative to have an in-depth knowledge of every concept, because every single mark matters. Remember, it’s only a matter of time before your life is shaped by the results of the examination.

Any medical graduate student preparing for the NEET-PG exam needs to first prepare their inner self, before starting the actual study preparation. When you are on a journey filled with challenges, obstructions become a part of the race. With each step, you’ll be open to a new obstacle in the form of doubts, clarifications, concepts, and topics that are tough to crack. It is in successfully overcoming these hurdles that will ultimately make the difference.  

We hope that our above-mentioned compilation of the most common hurdles that most medical students face will help you steer clear of them when you encounter them. If you have any doubts regarding the exam or need to clear doubts further, pay a visit to https://www.egurukulapp.com/ and learn with us!