Two hours before one of the most important exams of his life, Panshul Bansal was doing something most toppers wouldn’t openly admit to — playing video games. It wasn’t a one-off. Weeks earlier, he’d been mid-game online with a friend when the news broke that the NEET paper he’d just written stood cancelled, throwing months of preparation into chaos.
The National Testing Agency (NTA) released the NEET UG 2026 results on late Thursday night. For lakhs of families across the country, the wait was finally over. Bansal’s name sat at rank two. His score translated to a 99.99 percentile.
Close to 20 lakh students had appeared for the exam this year. Only 11.21 lakh of them qualified; of which just 19 candidates crossed the 700 mark out of 720. Bansal was one of them. Like most of this year’s toppers, he’s barely out of his teenage years, the number on his scorecard hides a far more deliberate, almost engineered, journey behind his achievement.
Building the base before the race began
Bansal says his “serious” preparation began only in Class 10. However, the groundwork had been laid much earlier. By Class 8, he was already working through the basics of trigonometry and calculus to ensure his fundamentals were strong and he would not struggle later. “So that I could get a basic level set and make my foundation strong,” he told indianexpress.com in a video interview.
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That early discipline is credited to his father, a businessman with a degree in naval engineering, who was one of the biggest forces behind his success. “He started teaching me physics and maths. He read the entire Resnick Halliday book for physics and taught me. So my Class 10 paved the way for my Class 11,” Bansal says.
The result was a perfect 180/180 in physics, despite what he found to be an unusually lengthy paper. “The paper was lengthy, but I did not panic because I knew I could do it,” he says.
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He’s quick to push back on the idea that a rank like his needs endless hours glued to a desk. “It’s not about the number of hours, it’s about how you utilise the hours which you’re putting in,” he says. He studied around six hours a day, sometimes seven, no more. Outside that window, he skated, swam, played badminton and the piano, solved Rubik’s cubes, and unapologetically logged hours on video games. “I didn’t give up any games or shows,” he says.
When the ground shifted beneath an entire batch
Nothing tested that composure quite like May 12. Bansal had just written the May 3 paper and was expecting a comfortable 701–706. “I was like, okay, now I have done my thing, so let’s just relax for a bit and do some other things which I actually like,” he recalls.
Then came the jolt. “I still remember the date, it was May 12. I was playing games with my friend online and the NTA posted on X that the NEET paper has been cancelled and will now be re-held some time later,” he says.
He describes the hours that followed: “I was in shock for a few hours. It definitely hampers the candidates’ mind, because you are suddenly in a comfortable place where you are away from the rigorous preparation. So that quickly, you have to just go back to it. It kind of hampers, and some people get depressed,” he says.
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‘Felt like I could do better’
But he chose to move on. “You should realise that if you can take a chance, an opportunity, and if you couldn’t score well, just give your best in these last two months. I was still not satisfied with my 701 or 706 score. I felt I could do better. So I thought, just give me one more month, and I will improve myself further and get into a better college,” he says.
That same clear-eyed habit shows up in how he handled inconsistent mock scores, which swung between 660 and 715 early on. “I would definitely, whenever I take an exam, go and properly analyse it , was it a silly mistake, was it that I forgot something, or was it that I did calculations wrong,” he says. Slowly, the scores flattened out to a steady 705.
His advice for the final stretch follows the same logic. Stop re-reading theory on loop, and drill previous years’ questions instead. “These questions indirectly help you in revision. Let’s say you get a question and you don’t know three of the options, but the fourth one you know is the answer, you can learn the other three from there and add it to your mistake copy,” he explains. “Later on, when you have to do very quick revisions, like every chapter in 10-15 minutes, that copy will immensely help you.”
Asked what crossed his mind the moment he saw his result, he doesn’t hesitate: “That I was finally going to get into my dream college and just inspire my dream of becoming a doctor.” He’s now weighing a future in surgery, drawn to orthopedics, cardiology and neurology.
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His advice to NEET aspirants is just as direct. “Definitely, consistency is the key to sustainable success. Just don’t think about the result that you’re going to get. Just keep on going. Give your 100% all day, every day. If you have studied hard, you will get the result,” he says.
(With inputs from Flora Swain)