How Nandini Chakaravarthy Cracked JEE, NEET and UGEE for IIIT Hyderabad

A Class 10 Record That Set the Baseline

Nandini came in as the CBSE Karnataka second board topper in Class 10, which is a rare starting point and a complicated one.

Students who arrive with a headline result carry an expectation that they will simply continue winning, and the Class 11 syllabus is where that assumption most often breaks. Board examinations reward completeness; competitive papers reward selection and speed under pressure. So her JEE and NEET preparation had to build a genuinely different skill. It could not simply extend what had already worked for her.

Speed and Accuracy as the Defining Combination

Her mentors are specific about the trait that mattered most. Nandini is fast, and her accuracy stayed high at that speed.

Most strong students have one or the other. Accurate students who work slowly leave marks on the table. Fast students who work carelessly give those marks straight back. Holding both simultaneously is what separates a very good score from an exceptional one, particularly in papers where the constraint is time rather than difficulty. In JEE and NEET preparation this is also the most trainable pairing, provided a student practises under genuine time pressure rather than at comfortable pace.

Untidy Method, Excellent Output

Deepak Sir's honest assessment includes that she could be a little messy in her approach. That observation is worth keeping in the story rather than editing out.

Coaching frequently tries to standardise method, and for most students that helps. It did not apply here. Forcing conventional presentation on a student whose own approach was producing top-level speed would have slowed her down. The tidiness would have cost more than it gained, and her JEE and NEET preparation left the method alone. Recognising the difference requires a mentor confident enough to leave a working system alone. Her output stayed excellent because nobody insisted it be tidy first.

“I wanted to do research in a computer-related field, and after discussing it with Deepak Sir I chose IIIT Hyderabad for its master's programme, which is offered only through UGEE and not through JEE Main.”

Nandini Chakaravarthy — ITY 2022–24

Carrying PCMB: Engineering and Medicine Together

As a PCMB student, Nandini prepared across Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics and Biology, keeping both the engineering and medical routes genuinely open.

This is a heavier load than either stream alone and it is not the right call for most students, because it can dilute both. It works when the core three subjects are already secure enough that Biology is an addition rather than a competitor. Her JEE and NEET preparation ran in parallel for exactly that reason, and it is the structural explanation for the range of results that followed.

635 in NEET With One Day of Biology

She scored 635 out of 720 in NEET, having studied Biology seriously for about a day before the examination.

That number should be read carefully. Physics and Chemistry make up half the paper and were already at competitive standard from her engineering preparation, so what the result really demonstrates is how much of NEET is carried by those two subjects when they are genuinely mastered. It is an exceptional outcome from an exceptional student, and it is emphatically not a preparation strategy for anyone else to follow.

Choosing UGEE Instead of the Familiar Route

Rather than entering through JEE Main like most candidates, Nandini cleared UGEE, the examination through which IIIT Hyderabad admits students to its dual-degree research programmes.

Those particular programmes are offered only via UGEE and not through JEE Main at all. Most aspirants never discover this, because it sits outside the standard information most families receive. Finding it required deliberately researching what she wanted to study and then working backwards to the entrance route, which is the reverse of how the decision is usually made.

Research Ambition Driving the College Choice

Her goal was research in a computing field, and the discussion with Deepak Sir framed the decision around that rather than around rank.

Once the objective was research rather than a degree certificate, the answer narrowed quickly. IIIT Hyderabad's master's programme became the obvious destination, and UGEE the obvious route to it. Being a born leader and comfortable making her own calls, she committed to it. This is the second time in this group that a student's final decision was driven by intended work rather than by brand, and it keeps producing better fits.

What Nandini's Result Proves

KCET, JEE Main, JEE Advanced, UGEE and NEET at 635 out of 720, ending at IIIT Hyderabad on the route she specifically wanted.

The pattern worth extracting is not the volume of examinations. It is that her JEE and NEET preparation was built to keep options genuinely open, and that the final decision was then made on the basis of the work she wanted to do. For exceptionally capable students, the real risk is not failing to get in anywhere. It is arriving somewhere excellent that was never actually the point.