Three years of her life had come down to this one exam.Ridhvi Saxena, 18, walked out certain she was on track to become a cardiologist.Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.That hope was shattered when India’s testing agency said the exam she had taken on May 3 had been compromised by leaks, ordering every candidate to retake it.Authorities this week went further and imposed a temporary nationwide ban on the Telegram messaging app, where it said “cheating rackets” were operating openly and selling leaked papers.“I feel very cheated on and betrayed by the system,” Saxena, a student based in the central Indian city of Bhopal, told NBC News in a phone interview.“I was excited for college,” she said.
“I was excited for so many things, but then they just put me back into the zone in which I worked so hard to get out of.”She now feels “burnt out” and increasingly unsure of how she’ll perform on the retest, which is set for Sunday.More than 2 million students across India took this year’s NEET undergraduate exam, the fiercely competitive gateway to India’s medical schools.The three-hour exam, which tests students on physics, chemistry and biology in a multiple-choice format, is among the country’s most punishing tests along with its engineering counterpart, the JEE, both demanding years of near-total devotion.For millions of students like Saxena, who had already attempted the NEET last year and thought the May 3 exam was the finish line, the decision to throw out their results was crushing.“You’ve sacrificed quality time with your family, and you’re just around four walls for these two to three years with your books.
And then, when you finally get a taste of freedom, the Indian education system just lets you down,” Saxena said.India’s Central Bureau of Investigation has opened an investigation into the leaked exam papers, and the Ministry of Electronics and Informatio...