Each admission cycle, India’s engineering and medical entrance examinations remind us of the extraordinary scale of aspiration. As per the National Testing Agency more than 12 lakh students appear for JEE Main every year, while NEET registrations have crossed 20 lakh in recent cycles. These examinations are designed to identify academic readiness for India’s most demanding professional pathways. Yet increasingly, the contest begins long before the paper: With who has access to structure. Access was meant to be the starting line, not the differentiator.
By the time a JEE or NEET aspirant sits the actual exam, three structural barriers have already shaped the contest. Cost determines who can sustain serious preparation. Geography determines whose town has the institutions, mentors and peers to support it. And online content determines whether a determined self-learner can convert effort into performance.
The financial reality begins early. The Comprehensive Modular Survey on Education, conducted as part of the 80th round of the National Sample Survey, found that 27% of students reported taking private coaching, with prevalence higher in urban India at 30.7% than rural India at 25.5%. With households remaining the first major source of education funding for 95% of students, India’s exam-preparation success is closely tied to the families’ ability to absorb the price of opportunity.
Coaching institutes have played an important role in professionalising preparation for high-stakes examinations. Their growth reflects a genuine need: Students require sequencing, discipline, testing, doubt resolution, mentorship and feedback. The coaching industry exists because families see value in structured preparation. The question is whether the structure that makes it valuable can be made more widely accessible.
{{/usCountry}}Coaching institutes have played an important role in professionalising preparation for high-stakes examinations. Their growth reflects a genuine need: Students require sequencing, discipline, testing, doubt resolution, mentorship and feedback. The coaching industry exists because families see value in structured preparation. The question is whether the structure that makes it valuable can be made more widely accessible.
{{/usCountry}}The second barrier is geographic. Preparation hubs have built remarkable institutional knowledge over decades. These hubs concentrate faculty depth, peer motivation, testing discipline and accumulated exam intelligence. What they cannot do, by definition, is be physically present everywhere. A bright student in a district without comparable infrastructure must often migrate at considerable cost or assemble preparation from sources of varying quality.
The third barrier is paradoxical. India today has the digital base for self-paced preparation at a scale previous generations could not have imagined. India’s active internet users crossed 950 million in 2025, with rural India accounting for more than half of them. As per the Comprehensive Modular Survey: Telecom, 2025, among people aged 15 to 29, 92.7% in rural areas and 95.7% in urban areas had used the internet in the preceding three months. The infrastructure for access has arrived. What has not arrived in equal measure is structure.
A NEET aspirant today may have NCERT explanations, YouTube lectures, PDFs, revision clips, mock tests and coaching notes. But abundance can become its own obstacle--the problem of finding the needle in a haystack. Without sequencing, students do not know what to prioritise. Without diagnostics, they do not know why they are stuck. Without revision discipline, they keep restarting the syllabus. JEE and NEET do not reward content consumption; they reward conceptual application under pressure.
That is why the real divide is not coaching versus self-study. It is guided preparation versus unguided preparation. Better-supported students are often taught how to break down a syllabus, revise in cycles, use previous-year questions, analyse mock tests, manage time, balance speed with accuracy and recover from poor scores. First-generation aspirants may have the same ambition and ability, but far less guidance on how to convert effort into performance.
The architecture of a fairer answer is already visible. PM eVidya hosts IITPAL, a series of IIT professor-prepared lectures for IIT-JEE and NEET preparation. E-Abhyas offers personalised adaptive test practice for JEE and NEET, publishing one full test every day in English and Hindi.
The next task is to organise this abundance into pathways that mirror how aspirants actually prepare. That means free, always-on access; faculty-led concept building; daily practice; rapid recall; revision windows; doubt resolution; downloadable notes; peer motivation; and data-backed feedback that helps students understand where they stand and what to do next. And, if all this can weave into a-day-in-the-life-of the student--structure becomes part of the learner’s everyday rhythm.
A national examination is, at its core, a promise: That the best-prepared and most capable student, not merely the best-supported one, will earn the seat. The reform that matters most is not more content or institutions. It is (ironically) teaching every Indian student how to learn, and ensuring that intelligence, effort and preparedness --not access--decide who walks through the doors of an IIT or a medical college.
(The views expressed are personal)
This article is authored by Venkat Phani Kiran, chief academic officer, Extramarks Education.