Amid the gloom, meet these TN State Board students who are celebrating the upholding of NEET, after dropping a year to prep

Not all State Board students are devastated by the Supreme Court order striking down Tamil Nadu's ordinance seeking one year's exemption from NEET. At least not the ones who took a year off to prepare for their NEET exams, confident that those are the marks that are going to get them a medical seat. After days of confusion, apprehension and stress, looks like they can finally take a sigh of relief at least till the admissions start. 

Arun Kumar - Spent: 2.5 lakh Dropped: 1 Year

"I took a year's gap because I had full faith in the Supreme Court order and when news started coming that NEET exemption would happen, I was shocked, even in my wildest dreams I didn't think that that would happen," Arun says. The 18-year-old attended coaching classes at Aakash for two years costing Rs 2.4 lakhs but when he didn't manage to get a seat despite scoring 194, he decided to take a year off to fully concentrate on NEET.

"Justice has been done," he said when the verdict came out.

Vishaal Chellaiah - Got Engineering seat, Let it go

Many opposed NEET claiming that it might not be fair to those students from rural backgrounds who studied in State Board schools and not be able to afford coaching classes for NEET. But for some rural students like Vishaal, the exemption would have been a big blow.  He also took a year's break and devoted his entire time to prepare for the exam, "I didn't go for coaching but I took the help of my friends and studied hard for the exam. I realised that in my Namakkal school we didn't do our 11th syllabus, so I decided to study that and I purchased all the NCERT books as well," said Vishaal.

Out of desperation, Vishaal attended the engineering counselling and secured a seat," But believing that the NEET decision will be in our favour, I gave up that seat too, I thought all the doors had shut for me. I couldn't bear the pain my parents were going through because of this," he said.

But now he has nothing to worry about except look forward to his admissions.

Aathi Vigneshwaran - Spent: 45k Dropped: 1 Year

"If the ordinance gets passed, we will ensure it gets quashed in the Court," Aathi had said before the judgment, he had also taken a year off for the exam. In order to score high, his family had spent Rs 45,000 rupees on coaching classes. But Aathi said he had no back-up plans, he's fixed on his MBBS pursuit. "I was worried that I didn't have any plans but now I'm glad," he says.

Sasi Dharan - Dropped: 2 Years

Lots of students take a year off and regret it, but Sasi Dharan took two years off to prepare for NEET, "I confidently took two years because I trusted the Supreme Court order stating that this year's admission would be based on NEET," he explains. If the ordinance had come through, Sasi Dharan says he would have been extremely disappointed in the system. " I'm not the only one, so many students are in the same state as me and because of this confusion, we would have had to settle for some other course that we don't even like," he adds

"My dream is to become a doctor, this is the career I want for myself. Nothing else," he said.