The NEET Score That Changed My Direction

In 2024, I scored 411 out of 720 in NEET. General category. No need to explain what that meant — we all know. No government college. No realistic shot at a private college without paying somewhere between sixty lakhs and a crore. I sat with the result for a few days and made the decision that felt most logical at the time: skip counselling, drop a year, prepare harder.

And I did. From mid-2024 all the way through early 2025, I gave everything I had. By March 2025, my mock test scores were sitting comfortably between 550 and 600. On most days, I felt genuinely good. But there were other days — the kind where you stare at a question and your mind just goes blank — when a quiet, uncomfortable thought crept in: What if the final score doesn’t hold? Then what?

Then the results came. 541 out of 720.

A jump of 130 marks from the year before. Something I was proud of. And still — general category, 541 — the door to a government medical seat was not opening. I had worked harder than I ever had in my life, and I was still standing outside the same wall.

I started letting myself consider the backup options. BDS at a decent college. BHMS, maybe. But every time I thought seriously about either of those, something inside me resisted. I wanted to be a doctor. An MBBS doctor. And I was not ready to let that go.

That is when I started exploring MBBS abroad.

The Russia Discovery — And the First Pleasant Shock

I had vaguely heard that Indian students go to Russia for MBBS, but I had never looked into it properly. So I did. Within a few hours of reading, I learned that thousands of Indian students study MBBS in Russia every year — real students, from families not too different from mine.

Then I looked at fees. I expected to see numbers that would immediately close the door. Instead, I saw tuition starting at around three lakh rupees per year. I genuinely had to re-read that. Three lakh. Per year. Not per semester. Not hidden behind fine print.

That was affordable. Not comfortable-for-everyone affordable, but we can make this work affordable.

My next question was the obvious one: what about living expenses? And this is where things got frustrating fast. Every consultancy I contacted gave me a different number. One said five thousand rupees a month would be enough. Another said ten thousand, including food. The gap between those two numbers alone should have told me something wasn’t right — but I kept asking, hoping someone would give me a straight answer.

Then I came across a YouTube video by MBBSDirect. The consultant did not sugarcoat anything. He walked through expenses clearly — hostel, food, personal spending — and put the realistic monthly figure at around twenty-five thousand rupees. It was more than what the other agents had said. But it was the first answer that made actual sense. The way it was explained, the reasoning behind the numbers — it felt honest. And honesty matters enormously when you are about to make a decision that involves your career and your family’s money.

The Meeting That Made Things Clear

I reached out to MBBSDirect and had a call with Gaurav Pathak Sir. I was not sure what to expect — I had spoken to a few consultants by that point, and most were in a hurry to get you to sign something. This conversation was different.

He did not start with a sales pitch. He started with a question: What do you actually need from a university to be able to focus and study well?

And then he answered it himself. He said the university should tick four specific boxes:

• A good, safe location
• A meaningful Indian student presence
• Faculty with real experience teaching in English — not just technically offering an English-medium programme
• Access to Indian food

If all four of those things are in place, he said, you can stop worrying about the environment and actually concentrate on becoming a doctor. That framing made complete sense to me. I told him I would prefer somewhere close to Moscow.

Three options came up.

The first was a National Nuclear Research University in Moscow itself — but the budget was significantly higher, and it was not the right fit. The second was Yaroslavl State Medical University, which looked good on paper, but the English-medium teaching experience was not strong enough. The third was Tver State Medical University.

I said yes. Tver it was. MBBSDirect handled the entire process from that point — documentation, visa application, pre-departure preparation, all of it. I did not have to navigate Russian bureaucracy alone, which, as I would later learn, was a far bigger relief than I had realised at the time.

September 12, 2025 — The Day Everything Became Real

On September 12, 2025, I stood at Indira Gandhi International Airport with 54 other students, all of us heading to Russia for the first time. We did not know each other well yet, but there was already an unspoken understanding between us — this is the path we chose, and we are walking it together. Mukesh Sir from MBBSDirect was travelling with us, and that helped more than I expected.

Moscow’s immigration process was not easy. We were held for close to two hours. Questions, document checks, more questions. My hands were not exactly steady by the end of it. But Gaurav Sir and Mukesh Sir had prepared us thoroughly — we had the right files, the right answers, the right documents in the right order. That preparation was the difference between a difficult hour and something genuinely dangerous.

From Moscow, a bus took us to Tver. We arrived around eight in the evening — hungry, tired, and slightly disoriented. And then — Indian food. Proper roti and sabzi. I know that sounds like a small thing. But after a long flight, immigration stress, and hours on a bus through an unfamiliar country, that first meal felt like the ground returning under my feet. We ate, found our rooms, and slept.

What Nobody Tells You About the First Few Days in Tver

The next morning, we had medical tests, biometrics, and photographs. Mukesh Sir coordinated everything — I basically just had to show up where I was told to show up. The whole process moved with a smoothness I had not expected. By day three, we were ready for classes.

I was not prepared for what those classes felt like.

In Kota, where I had been coaching for NEET, my class had three hundred and fifty students. It was a crowd, always. You could disappear in it very easily. At Tver State Medical University, I was placed in a group of twelve students. Twelve.

Twelve students to one teacher. If I did not understand something, I could simply ask — and the teacher would answer me, not a room of hundreds. That shift alone changed how I thought about studying medicine.

The campus was something else entirely. I had seen lecture halls like this only in films and college brochures — the kind you look at and think, that cannot be real, that must be staged. Walking into one on my first day, realising this was my actual classroom for the next six years, was a feeling I have not been able to fully describe to anyone back home.

My seniors here speak about clinical training in Tver with a confidence that is hard to fake. It begins after second year, and from what they describe, it is exceptionally hands-on. I have not reached that stage yet — first year is nearly finished — but I am already looking forward to it.

The Money — Real Numbers, No Guessing

This is the section most people are really looking for. So here it is — honestly, based on my actual first year at Tver State Medical University.

On the hostel front — right now four of us are sharing, which keeps individual costs low. But a few of us are already planning to move into a two-bedroom flat a little further into the programme. Splitting a proper apartment between two or three people often works out cheaper than private hostel per head, and gives you a much better quality of life for studying.

Is Tver State Medical University Worth It?

My first year is nearly done. And when I look back at where I was in the summer of 2025 — staring at a NEET score of 541, proud of the improvement and still shut out, wondering if the dream was over — I feel something I did not expect to feel: gratitude.

Not just relief that things worked out. Actual, specific gratitude that the path led here.

The education at Tver State Medical University is rigorous. The faculty is genuinely experienced with international students. The small group structure means you are never invisible. The environment is focused. The Indian student community here is large and well-established — students have been coming to Tver since 1998, and that legacy shows in how well the university understands what Indian students need.

MBBS in Russia was never my original plan. But plans change. Sometimes they change because of circumstances. And sometimes — not always, but sometimes — they change for the better.

It does not have to be easy. It just has to be right.