NEET 2021 results were announced by the National Testing Agency (NTA) on November 1 and around 16 lakh candidates received their scorecards. One of them was 17- year-old Karthika G Nair, who not only topped the exam but scored cent per cent marks.
Born in Kerala, Karthika has been brought up in Mumbai. Her father Gangadharan K works at a private firm’s logistics department and her mother Sri Vidya is a teacher at a local college in Mumbai.
Karthika completed her Class 12 from DAV School in Mumbai’s Panvel. While she was preparing for the medical entrance exams for the past two years, she “did not expect to get full marks”.
Mumbai had been badly hit by both the waves of Covid 19 This impacted NEET aspirants’ preparations, as educational institutes were shut due to the spread. But Karthika was determined to ace the exam.
“There were many challenges during the pandemic. Schools and coaching centres were inaccessible. Unlike JEE aspirants, we do not have the luxury to prepare online as NEET is an offline exam. At times, it became difficult to practise in the pen-and-paper mode because most of us ran out of question papers and other studying materials. However, where there is a will, there is a way, and it all came down to a happy ending,” said Karthika, who is a fan of crime thriller novels.