r/indiamedschool

myquals : 12th graduate

I'm getting government MBBS seats in colleges in 8 recently established colleges in karnataka (2016-2022). At the same time, I'm getting Biotechnology in top engineering colleges in Karnataka (including colleges like RVCE).

I'm genuinely passionate about Biotechnology, but I honestly don't enjoy coding and MBBS was never my dream from the beginning.

The main reasons I'm considering medicine are my father's dream, the respect associated with being a doctor, and the relatively secure career path.

I also have a long-term goal of preparing for UPSC and would love to become an IRS officer someday. I feel engineering might give me more flexibility for that, but I'm worried about financial independence and career prospects in Biotechnology.

If you were in my position, what would you choose and why? Especially looking for opinions from doctors, biotech graduates, engineers, and UPSC aspirants.

This is a long post, so please bear with me.

Basically, I consider myself an average student. I understand concepts well, I learn reasonably well, and I’m actually quite good at practical work. However, I study in a private deemed medical college where the teaching is, at best, average.

The problems started during my second year. A particular group of around 14–15 students, including me, were made to repeatedly write professional exams for the same subjects—some of us 4, 5, or even 6 times—because we kept failing despite our performance. In my college, there are students who are influential and wealthy enough to get through these situations more easily by secretly giving money. I was neither influential nor wealthy enough to have that advantage.

At the same time, there were students who barely studied, sometimes not even for a day before the exam, yet managed to pass.

That is just the context.

Coming to the present, around 45 students, including me, have now failed the supplementary exams, while the revaluation results still haven't been released even after a month.

There is another issue with our college. Our batch size used to be around 150 students, but after our super-senior batch, it increased to around 250. There isn't enough infrastructure or internship capacity to accommodate everyone. The previous batch failures who repeated were apparently passed through, and now there are too many students competing for the available internship positions. This has contributed to the unusually high number of students being failed.

Interestingly, almost all the students who had repeatedly failed during second year are again on this list, except for one person.

Recently, I was talking to a friend who has already entered internship. I mentioned that sometimes I wonder how different our medical-school experience would have been if we had studied in a different college. I'm not saying this simply because we failed. Our college has been extremely strict, and compared with government medical colleges, our clinical exposure and postings have not always been comparable either.

While discussing this, my friend started talking about how our college does actually pass people and indirectly implied that students who study properly pass within their first two attempts, including supplementary.

The way she said it made me realise that this might actually be how she views me.

I tried to argue that our students aren't necessarily academically inferior to students from other colleges and that failing repeatedly doesn't automatically mean someone is incapable or doesn't work hard. But the conversation became increasingly uncomfortable because her tone felt very condescending.

What confused me even more is that I don't know where she is coming from.

Maybe she genuinely believes that hard work is the only reason people pass. In fact, when I previously mentioned that some students might have passed partly because of luck or circumstances, she strongly disagreed and said that passing is purely the result of hard work.

Or maybe she is insecure herself and needs to believe that the people who passed deserved to pass while those who failed simply didn't work hard enough. Perhaps she sees herself as one of the students who "worked hard and passed" and doesn't want to acknowledge how much luck, circumstances, college politics, or individual differences can influence these things.

I obviously don't know what she actually thinks, and I don't want to put words into her mouth.

But the conversation made me realise that she may have a very different perception of me and of the students who have struggled academically. The way she spoke to me felt as though she was placing herself on one side—the students who worked hard and succeeded—and me on the other—the students who supposedly didn't work hard enough.

And honestly, that hurt.

I'm already struggling with the fact that my batchmates are moving ahead while I'm being left behind. I know that I have failed repeatedly, and I'm not trying to deny my own shortcomings. But I also don't think repeated failure automatically means someone is lazy, unintelligent, or undeserving of the same respect as someone who passed on their first or second attempt.

What bothered me most wasn't even what she said about the college. It was the feeling that, through that conversation, I suddenly saw how she might actually perceive me.

So what I really want to ask is:

Am I reading too much into my friend's comments, or does the way she spoke actually sound condescending toward students who have repeatedly failed? Is it reasonable to believe that passing or failing medical school isn't always a direct reflection of how hard someone worked, especially when factors like college environment, teaching quality, clinical exposure, circumstances, and even luck can play a role? Am I being unfair for questioning the idea that “if you worked hard enough, you would have passed”? And if you were in my position, how would you interpret what my friend said and deal with the feeling that someone you considered a friend may actually look down on you because you've struggled academically?

For those of you who have repeatedly struggled or failed academically, have you ever felt that people who passed started viewing you differently because of it? Did it affect your friendships or the way you viewed yourself?