How Dr.Krishnakumar turned his tables by scoring AIR 578 in NEET PG 2018 after a rank of 10243 in 2017!

The Marrow team is proud of Dr.Krishnakumar Vylapally, who secured a rank of 578 after acing a score of 760 in NEET PG 2018. He is a MD General Medicine aspirant, who got a rank of 10,243 in the previous NEET session and was able to turn the tables around this year around.

In our exclusive discussion with him, he has shared us some of his insights into his PG prep by touching upon the techniques that he employed to score big and how a one time disappointment should not deter you from being persistent with your efforts.

1) Hello Dr.Krishnakumar. Please tell us a bit about yourself

Hi. I am Dr.Krishnakumar. I am from Kerala. I did my UG from Kottayam Medical College. I belong to the 2010 batch. This is the second time I attempted NEET PG. My rank in 2017 was 10,243. My AIIMS 2017 rank was around 13,000. My June DNB 2017 rank was 154. My current All India Rank for NEET PG 2018 is 578 and my score is 760. My aim is to pursue MD General Medicine from Kottayam Medical College.

2) So how long was the duration of your PG prep?

My duration of prep was one year. I started serious preparation from March 2017. I was working as a Medical Officer at National Health Mission at Kottayam for 5 months. My duration of serious prep was about 10 months. I attempted NEET PG 2017 with 2 months of prep as my internship got over only then. I had been attending the coaching classes from DAMS. Then I heard about Marrow from my friends and I used it for the mock test series. Initially I had used the free materials from the Marrow app and after I went through the MCQ’s and test series I upgraded my plan to Pro B.

3) Did you think the introduction of negative marking changed the flow of your preparation? If so, how?

No. Negative marking scheme did not affect me. Initially when I started giving my mock tests I got around 90 to 100 questions wrong. But as I went through with my preparation it decreased and in my final NEET exam I got 70 questions wrong.

4) How many hours of prep did you go through per day?

I normally used to spend around 14 hours a day for my preparation. I always make my own notes, construct my own flow charts and flash cards after studying a particular subject and that took a lot of time. Some days of the week, I’ll study around 10-12 hours.

5) On a scale of 1 to 10, how well do would you grade your level of preparation for NEET?

I would score myself 9.

6) Where do you think was the lapse in your preparation? What do you wish, you could have done better to have been more prepared?

On the day of my exam, I found it a little difficult to hold my focus for those 3.5 hours of the exam. And made me attempt wrong many of those questions which I had studied. So I believe I should have prepared myself during my preparation to hold my attention span for more than 3 hours and that would helped me score better.

7) NEET being a highly intense and competitive exam, it’s natural for students to have self-doubts and suffer dips in their confidence level. How did it affect your preparation?

I always try to hold my positive attitude as much as possible. Taking many mock tests and seeing a good score in them helped me hold on to a positive feeling.

8) Were there any misleading practices regarding your prep that you that you eventually realised during the later phase of your preparation? How did you fix it?

I heard about Marrow only during the middle of my preparation and I wasn’t able to complete several of the modules in Marrow. Had I known Marrow earlier I would have been able to prepare from more materials and that would have helped me.

9) Did you feel the Marrow app offered you a strategic advantage, as compared to what your prep would have been without the app?

I would go through my notes from a subject and then go through the questions from the topic. So whenever I come across a question which I don’t know the answer to, the solutions explained in Marrow will also have references to that answer including the page numbers from books like Harrison. So I’ll go back and read not just that particular question but also other points in that topic. It’s a time consuming process but it benefited me a lot.

10) Would you like to point out anything specifically in Marrow’s content that you’d like to highlight for our users?

In subjects like Medicine, Pathology and Community Medicine, information in some topics is condensed in the form of tables and it helped a lot during revision before the exams. It is difficult to go through the whole subject while revising and these tables helps a lot.

11) On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely is it that you would recommend Marrow to your fellow peers and colleagues?

I would give a score of 8. I have already referred some of my colleagues and relatives to Marrow, as it’s a platform with really good set of Questions and content.

12) At what time period during preparation would you recommend they start using the materials available at Marrow?

I would suggest them to use Marrow from Day 1. Since Marrow is available in your phones, at any time, from anywhere you can access any modules available and that’s a huge advantage for students.

12) Do you have any other advice or suggestions for students who are currently preparing for NEET?

I would advise everyone to start solving questions right from the beginning and try and improve on your accuracy. I think this is a better way to prepare rather than just mugging up the theory subjects. We are human beings and there is no way we’ll be able to rememeber all the subjects. So try and equip yourself to remember snippets of information by using flash cards, notes etc. After completing modules in Marrow, I would suggest revision of those modules and not not be complacent that you’re done with them as revision of the questions you went wrong is crucial. All the best!

We wish Dr.Krishnakumar the very best for his future endeavours!

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