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Dr Monish ranked about 28,000 in his first NEET PG and was AIR 1 in 2026. This guide covers how to decide whether a drop year makes sense, how toppers structured the twelve months, and how they got through score plateaus and burnout.
Under EyeConic's September 2026 video on questions to answer before taking a drop, one comment sets a simple test: did you complete all 19 subjects, do one or two revisions, take Grand Tests regularly and revise from concise material?
If several answers are no, those are gaps a dedicated year can close. If every answer is yes, look at exam-day execution; Dr Monish realised that knowledge alone was not enough. Flat or falling ranks, Dr Antonio D'Costa wrote on Medium in 2019, mean doing things that are not giving you growth.
Repeat attempts are common among recent toppers:
| Topper | Earlier result | Later result | What they changed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dr Monish Kanna R | About 28,000 (first attempt) | AIR 1, NEET PG 2026 | Serious study after internship, one source, a Grand Test every 7–10 days |
| Dr Netresh Sharma | NEET PG 1,019; INI-CET 205 | AIR 1, INI-CET Nov 2024 | Readings built on standard textbooks, 150 timed questions a day |
| Dr Sairam | NEET PG 2025 rank 3,700 | AIR 1, INI-CET Nov 2025 | Ready-made notes for revision, every mock analysed |
| Dr Kavya | NEET PG about 9,000 | AIR 9, INI-CET Nov 2025 | One platform, short copies, weekly Grand Tests |
| Dr Navaneetha Menoky | Rank 1,700 | AIR 4, INI-CET May 2024 | Revised between classes and on the way home |
Ranks as reported in each topper's interview. INI-CET is the AIIMS entrance, held twice a year.
PrepLadder's December 2025 roadmap offers two starting orders. Method A begins with the first-year subjects and suits recent graduates and visual learners. Method B starts with Medicine, then Surgery, then Pathology, and is the one PrepLadder points repeat students and anyone with under nine months towards. Either way: one video platform, one primary Qbank and one notes source per subject.
Its full-time 12-month plan opens with Pathology (25–30 days), Pharmacology (20–25) and Microbiology (15–20), and places Anatomy, Physiology and Community Medicine in months five and six. Its guide to scoring 650+ splits study time like this:
Share of study time by subject group (PrepLadder, December 2025)
Anatomy, Physiology, Biochemistry and Forensic Medicine sit outside those groups; Careers360 suggests 20–30 minutes a day to keep such subjects from slipping.
Toppers' timelines share a shape: a first reading in subject blocks, a second pass led by previous-year questions, repeated revision cycles and a final month for all 19 subjects. The phases below combine them; count the months back from your exam date.
Answer the four questions in writing, sit a baseline Grand Test, fix one source per subject and open a mistake notebook.
Four or five subjects at a time, each block revised before the next, as Dr Monish did. Every wrong Qbank answer goes into your notes. Dr Netresh's first reading took five to six months.
Faster, and shaped by previous-year topics; Dr Netresh's took two to three months. This is when Grand Tests become a fixed weekly or ten-day habit.
Short, repeated cycles from your own notes. Dr Monish had three or four done by March; Dr Pallakshi (AIR 2, 2026) fitted three or four into her final eight months.
Marrow suggests starting its revision videos at least 60 days out; the set takes 27–36 days at 4.5–6 hours a day. Keep the final month for one pass of all 19 subjects, as Dr Pallakshi advises.
Dr Monish raised his intensity in the last two weeks, then eased off in the final days. Add no new topics now.
A normal day. PrepLadder budgets 8–10 hours for full-time candidates. Dr Monish settled at 7–8 hours and about 100 MCQs a day; Dr Netresh worked in timed 40-minute slots of 50 questions and reviewed each slot straight away.
Repeat-attempt toppers mostly advise against adding material. Dr Monish kept the same notes through a long plateau: “Sticking to one source and revising it repeatedly helped me.” Dr Vedant Karaddi (INI-CET AIR 3, May 2024) relied on one source after his previous attempt, and Dr Sanika Mahar's resource video makes the same point.
Switching platforms? Dr Pallakshi returned to one she knew, to build her structure faster, and a 2020 repeaters' guide on Medium warns against changing all your resources at once. Replace only a subject whose material clearly failed you; the platform comparison lays out the 2026 courses.
What 27 topper interviews mentioned, as tallied by NEET PG aspirant DrG on YouTube (24 Sep 2026)
Qbank and Grand Tests. Dr Monish solved modules first to learn, then aimed for at least 40 of 50 per module and built custom modules of recent NEET PG and AIIMS, image, video and clinical questions. From February he sat a Grand Test every 7–10 days on Sunday mornings at exam timing and analysed it that afternoon: wrong answers, then marked ones, then the whole paper.
INI-CET as a checkpoint. It runs twice a year, and the next sitting is on 1 November 2026. Dr Monish's November INI-CET rank of about 1,400 gave him a confidence boost before his NEET PG AIR 1.
Stuck at 140–150 in Grand Tests for a while and never inside a GT's top 100, he kept his source and revised more.
Balanced a job with preparation, studying even a little on tiring days rather than stopping.
“Burnout is normal, the key is to come back from it.”
Wrote NEET PG 2024 after a two-year bond, having sat the previous year's exam for practice.
After 205 in the May INI-CET, made PYQs and timed daily questions the core of his preparation and finished first in November.
Medical Dialogues describes Dr Pallakshi as a military medical officer who studied between patients and after duty hours. Dr Akash Maity reached rank 1912 in NEET PG 2025 after a year as a junior resident in surgery, by his own YouTube account. For working candidates, PrepLadder's roadmap budgets 4–5 hours a day rather than 8–10.
Dr Monish burned out at about 10 hours a day before his INI-CET, then moved to a library, put sleep, walking and jogging first, meditated and stopped pushing so hard. On days he could not concentrate he solved 100–150 MCQs instead of forcing himself to read. Dr Sairam's advice: show up every day and do something; breaks are fine.
Build rest into the plan. Dr Aarushi Narwani (AIR 1, NEET PG 2023) took time out roughly every ten days, Dr Prem Tilak played turf football at weekends, and Dr Jui kept dancing, singing and painting. When NEET PG 2024 was postponed, Dr Hamsavardhini took five days off with her family and resumed the next week.
A 2020 topper on Marrow's blog calls anxiety during preparation normal and urges students to talk it out with friends or family, and one student under a drop-year video wrote that neglecting their wellbeing cost them two drop years. If the heaviness lasts for weeks, tell someone you trust: a friend, a family member, a mentor or a counsellor.
It can be when the gaps are clear. Dr Monish went from about 28,000 to AIR 1, and Dr Kavya from about 9,000 in NEET PG to AIR 9 in INI-CET. If you have not yet covered and revised all 19 subjects with regular Grand Tests, a focused year has room to change the result.
Full-time plans such as PrepLadder's use 8–10 hours a day, but Dr Monish settled at 7–8 after burning out at about 10, and Dr Pallakshi puts consistency above long hours. Build up gradually.
Most toppers here did not: Dr Monish kept his source through a plateau and Dr Pallakshi went back to a platform she knew. If one subject's teaching never worked for you, change that subject's source and keep the rest.
Plateaus are normal; Dr Ravi Bansal stalled near 150 while he kept putting off subjects such as Community Medicine. Analyse each test, find the subjects that keep costing marks and revise them from your own notes. Cerebellum's advice for students around 145 correct is to target the short subjects, Medicine, PSM and Pharmacology.
Yes. Dr Pallakshi (AIR 2, 2026) prepared while working, and Dr Hamsavardhini (AIR 7, 2024) wrote the exam after a two-year bond. Plan around 4–5 hours a day, the figure PrepLadder's roadmap uses for working candidates.
Some toppers have used it as a checkpoint. It is held twice a year, next on 1 November 2026, and Dr Monish's November INI-CET result gave him a confidence boost on the way to AIR 1.
Share your drop-year PDFs on WhatsApp: main notes, rapid-revision notes, your mistake notebook or handwritten short notes. We bind each subject separately so you can revise one volume at a time, print image pages in colour and ship across India.
Order on WhatsAppInterviews with toppers who succeeded on a repeat attempt or while working, student videos and comments, and published study plans, read in October 2026.