INTERVIEW WITH OUR TOPPER DR. VISHAL VERMA

INTERVIEW WITH OUR TOPPER DR. VISHAL VERMA

Dr. Vishal Verma did his MBBS from Dr.S.C.Govt. Medical College, Nanded, Maharashtra; & joined DAMS in 2011 Regd no. DL01198.

He secured:

· RANK 43 IN PUNJAB PGET 2012,

· RANK 271 IN MHPGCET 2012,

· RANK 1035 IN AIPGMEE 2012.

DAMS: Congratulations on securing good ranks. What is the secret of your success in this exam?
Dr Vishal Verma: The secret is hard work with positive attitude, dedication and the perfect guidance I got from DAMS. The DAMS faculty was very cooperative and helpful and was always keen to render assistance to every student.

DAMS: How did your parents, family and friends contribute to your success?
Dr Vishal Verma: My family has always been a tremendous support for me and it was impossible to achieve all this without their wonderful support.

DAMS: Who influenced you to take up Medicine?
Dr Vishal Verma: My parents and family members.

DAMS: We appreciate the fact that preparing for an extremely competitive exam must be really challenging. During your preparation, did you ever doubt your ability to succeed in it?
Dr Vishal Verma: To be honest, I did doubt myself once, but thanks to Dr. Sumer Sethi, who made me believe in myself and focus on target with a beam of positive attitude.

DAMS: Which books did you read for the theory part?
Dr Vishal Verma: I read the standard textbooks like harrisons and bailey & love during MBBS days. It is an extremely difficult task to go through these books with the exam head-on, as there is always a shortage of time and 20 subjects are to be covered. So I primarily followed DAMS classroom notes, which were actually helpful in solving at least 8 out of 10 questions.

DAMS : Which books did you read for MCQ revision? Which revision books were the most productive and which were least?
Dr Vishal Verma: Amit Ashish for medicine and surgery, Dr. Ruchi Rai for Ophthalmology, Dr. Sumer Sethi for Radiology, Dr. Premanshu Bhushan for Skin and of course THE FIVE VOLUMES (MK & AA)

Across was less productive as there are too many mistakes.

DAMS : How important you think was DAMS in your preparation ?
Dr Vishal Verma: “What does PG preparation mean, & how to accomplish it systematically and successfully?” Had I not been a Damsonian, I would have said, “I don’t know”

I think I need not say anything further....

DAMS: What do you think is the better way of preparation between selective, intensive study and wide, extensive study? What did you choose as your style of studying?
Dr Vishal Verma: What is actually required is an optimum balance between these two ways, so that you can have sufficient number of revisions done. You should know which subjects/ topics you are better at, and then decide which topics you can go through quickly, and which ones require more time.

DAMS: Indian PG entrances are highly competitive so to compete them students end up in appearing in multiple PG exams , kindly extend your views on this and also their pros and cons of appearing in multiple PG entrances .
Dr Vishal Verma: It is always wise to appear in multiple exams, as it helps you to define the strategy for those 3-3.5 hours of exam. But one thing is very important. It’s that your focus should be only one exam. For example, as in my case, I focussed on AIPG and my whole preparation was targeted for AIPG only. I never deviated from this target, though I appeared for 3-4 exams in between.

DAMS: Which subjects did you focus on?
Dr Vishal Verma: The bigger ones, including patho, pharma, micro, medicine, surgery, psm, obgy need thorough study to ensure that you qualify. But most students are relatively weaker in short subjects, SARP(skin, anaesthesia, radiology & psychiatry) and BAP(biochemistry, anatomy & physiology), so these become rank defining.

DAMS: What was your strategy for the exam day? How many questions did you attempt and why?
Dr Vishal Verma: stress, tension and nervousness are on the cards for each and every candidate on the day of exam. So firstly you need to hold firmly your mind, heart, brain, etc., so that these remain in your control and you don’t panic. Usually 250-275 is the recommended attempt. I did 275.

DAMS: What do you want to specialize in, why and where?
Dr Vishal Verma: I am interested in orthopaedics.

DAMS: Which teachers in DAMS influenced you most and what do you like about DAMS and would recommend to your juniors?
Dr Vishal Verma: I pay my utmost regards and thanks to each and every teacher at DAMS, without whom it was simply an impossible task for me. The best thing about DAMS is the simplicity of teaching even the most complicated topics. The DAMS exclusive club on facebook is a boon for instant solutions to your queries, and also for correction of the mistakes in various guidebooks. To my juniors I would simply say that DAMS has a clear edge above all others, and especially with the NEET pattern coming up, DAMS is the only institute which is providing NEET-based coaching for the past few years, and teachers at DAMS are definitely the best predictors of potential MCQs for future.