An Open Letter to NEET-UG Medicine Aspirants.

I want to talk to you directly. Not as a senior doctor. Not as someone who has spent twenty-seven years in clinics, classrooms, and hospital wards. But as a person who has seen too many bright young people hurt themselves over a single exam.

If you are standing at that gate right now, scared, tired, sure that your whole life depends on one result, then this is for you.

Read it slowly.

—

Let me begin with a confession.

Both my children are in medicine today. And for most of their growing years, they told us, firmly, again and again, almost angrily, that they would never join this field. 

They had their reasons. They had watched their parents leave before they woke up and come home after they had gone to sleep. They had seen us miss birthdays, leave dinners halfway because of a phone call, and give up planned holidays for emergencies.

They knew, better than any career counsellor, what the “life” of medicine really looks like once you take away the white coat and the respect… long hours, little sleep, and almost no balance between work and home.

They saw all of it, up close, for years.

And then, in their own time and fully on their own, they chose it anyway.

—

I tell you this for a reason. Medicine, when it is right for someone, usually *finds* them. 

Quietly, without being forced, often against everything they once said. It almost never comes out of desperation. 

The students I worry about most are not the ones medicine has called. They are the ones being pushed, dragged, or frightened into it, treating a seat as the only outcome their whole life is allowed to have.

—

So let me be honest with you about the work itself.

I love this work. I will not pretend otherwise. 

There is little in life like sitting beside a scared stranger and watching the fear leave their face as they understand they will be alright. 

Medicine has given me purpose, the joy of learning all my life, and the trust of people in their hardest moments. If it is truly your calling, go after it with everything you have, and I will be the first to cheer you on.

—

But the white coat is not a halo. I would be lying if I let you believe it was. 

Behind it is a job. A hard, ordinary, wonderful job. 

The hours are brutal. 

The paperwork never ends. 

The weight on your heart never fully lifts. 

My children were not wrong about any of it. They simply decided that this life was worth it for *them*. 

That is the only honest reason to join. 

Not because a family demanded it, not because society claps for it, and certainly not because you cannot imagine surviving without it.

—

I often wish every family could see the hidden, unglamorous reality of this profession before pushing their children into it. 

If parents truly understood what it costs to be a good doctor, the deep exhaustion, the nights that eat up your weekends, and the quiet price that “success” in medicine demands from an ordinary human being, they would stop treating a medical seat as the ultimate, shining prize. 

They would see it for what it is… a very demanding life that needs a willing heart, not a forced one.

And because society treats that seat like a prize, we need to talk about the money. Because almost no one wants to.

—

There is a dangerous belief that a medical degree is a sure path to a rich and safe life. It is not, for many. And when it happens, it happens very late.

When a family borrows heavily, risking their life savings on years of coaching hubs or a private seat that costs as much as a house, they place a crushing, unfair load on a career that has not even started. 

A young doctor who begins life buried under loans is no longer simply learning to heal. They are stuck in a desperate race to earn back what they spent. And slowly, a noble profession becomes a stressful job to help with payments. 

No degree on this earth is worth your family’s financial safety or your own peace of mind.

—

Now, here’s the thing I really need you to hear.

We are losing young people. 

Gifted, gentle, one-of-a-kind young people, who looked at their marks and decided they were worthless.

I have to say this as plainly as I can: that is a lie. And it is a deadly lie. 

Missing a medical seat does not mean you lack brains, or discipline, or worth. It means you landed on the wrong side of a line, in a crowded system that cannot accept tens of thousands of perfectly able students simply because there are not enough seats. Not because they are not good enough.

If you are reading this around the time of your result, please do one thing before anything else. Talk to someone. A parent, a teacher, a friend, anyone at all. 

Seeking help when you are in pain is not weakness. It is the bravest and wisest thing a person can do. 

The exam will be forgotten.

There is no mark, no seat, no career on earth worth more than your one and only life.

And if medicine does not work out, I request you not to see it as a closed door. See it as a bend in the road.

The world needs clear minds in research, public health, technology, business, design, teaching, arts, and many other important fields.

You’ll find your way.

—

I have spent twenty-seven years watching this profession give and take equally.

It is a good life. But it is NOT the only good life.

A field made to protect life should never, ever become the reason a young one is lost.

So breathe.

Look up. 

The stethoscope is just one of the instruments in the large orchestra of life, and you, my friend, whatever happens, will still be part of the music.

–.

Shashikiran Umakanth

Dr. Shashikiran Umakanth (MBBS, MD, FRCP Edin.) is the Professor & Head of Internal Medicine at Dr. TMA Pai Hospital, Udupi, under the Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE). While he has contributed to nearly 100 scientific publications in the academic world, he writes on MEDiscuss out of a passion to simplify complex medical science for public awareness.