Ashika, Gauri crack NEET with flying colours, do state proud

Deepkamal Kaur

Jalandhar, June 14

Classmates Ashika Aggarwal and Gauri Gupta have done Delhi Public School proud by bagging the 11th and 55th All-India Rank in the NEET-UG exam, the result of which was declared on Tuesday evening.

4 from Hoshiarpur, too, make the cut

• Four students of Cambridge International School, Dasuya, have also cracked the prestigious NEET 2023. Nitika secured 626 marks, Puneetpal 588, Maninder 576 and Snigdha 477. These students have brought laurels to their parents as well as their school
• Extending his best wishes to the successful students, School principal OP Gupta said a person should always keep working very hard to get success because the hard work never goes waste. The students gave the credit of their success to their teachers and parents as well. They said the teachers have played the role of a mentor to help them succeed

Both the girls have been the best of friends and the closest competitors, too, at the school as well as the private coaching centre in the city. Both of them are likely to be classmates again at AIIMS in Delhi. “We have always been the top two students of our classes. But ours has always been a very healthy competition and we have always been forthcoming to help each other,” said the girls.

Ashika marked one question in chemistry wrong and lost five marks due to negative marking, while Gauri did two questions in the same subject wrong to lose 10 marks. Ashika has scored 715 marks out of 720, while Gauri’s score is 710. In Class XII CBSE examination too, both had faced a fierced contest in the medical stream. While Ashika secured 96.6 per cent, Gauri trailed with one mark obtaining 96.4 per cent.

Ashika’s father Vasu Aggarwal, a Chartered Accountant, and her mother Anu Gupta, Associate Professor of Food Science and Technology at DAV College, said they were sure of their daughter’s success but never knew that she could achieve her aim so closely. She has been a state-level basketball player and a good dancer too, tells her mother.

A resident of Maqsudan locality here, Ashika shared her experiences, “At the end of my Class XI, I had begun showing a fall and my mock tests fetched me as low as 540 of 720 marks. I had almost given up. But then my teachers counselled me for many days and pushed me again, saying that I could do it. That was my turning point. I realised that ups and downs are bound to happen and I needed to continue to do better,” she said.

Gauri, too, has been a class apart. She prepared for both NEET as well as JEE Mains and Advanced. “I liked both biology and mathematics and I could not give up either of the two subjects”, she explains. She got 99.76 percentile in JEE Mains and is awaiting JEE Advanced result. “I kept mathematics I got a continuous guidance from my elder brother Soumya Gupta, who is studying in IIT Guwahati and my grandfather who was a Chief Engineer in PSPCL. I kept biology as my father Col (Dr) Suraj Gupta has remained my mentor,” she shared.

She had cleared National Talent Search Examination (NTSE) and Kishore Vaigyanik Protsahan Yojana (KVPY) too. Like Ashika and Gauri, two more city-based students – Ananya Chopra and Khwahish – who have scored well in NEET, too, have taken coaching from a private institute. Ananya has got 384th rank scoring 696 marks while Khwahish, who trails with just one mark, stands at 544th position.

Ananya, who is a student of Apeejay School, comes from a family of doctors. While her father Dr Rahul Chopra is a radiologist, her mother Dr Anupama Chopra is an IVF expert. Khwahish both her parents working as government school teachers.

Sidharth Mohan Malhan, who has go 692 marks and 605th rank, has his father Dr Sunil Malhan serving as endodontist and mother Dr Sonika Malhan serving as dentist in the city. His sister Dr Shreya Malhan is pursuing MD in dermatology from Government Medical College in Patiala. From St. Soldier Group of Institutions, Megha Joshi has scored 666 marks, Bisampreet Kaur has got 634 marks and Sumit Jakhar has obtained 627 marks.

A student of Sanskriti KMV-Gunpriya has cleared NEET with a score of 99.27, grabbing AIR 309. She has scored 628 marks and AIR of 14503.