How to Get a NEET UG Biology Teaching Job on EdTech As A Current Med Student (To Cover Living Costs)
It was 9:17 PM on a Tuesday in my first year of med school, and I was stirring instant maggi in my hostel mug while staring at my bank app. Rent was due in 10 days, my first quarterly stipend was delayed by at least two more weeks, and I’d already asked my dad for extra money for textbooks that month. I didn’t want to ask again. I’d aced NEET UG just six months before, biology was my strongest subject, I’d already helped three of my cousins work through their revision notes back home. Why couldn’t I teach it to cover my costs? The only question was how to get in with an edtech platform, when I had zero teaching experience and was still a student myself.
I started by asking the only person I knew who was doing it: a third-year senior who posted NEET revision reels on Instagram. I bought her a coffee at the campus canteen, and she told me the first mistake I was making was aiming for a big head educator spot on Unacademy right off the bat. “Those roles go to people with 100k followers already,” she said. “They’re dying for current med students to do the entry-level work no one else wants, and that’s how you work your way up.”
That conversation changed everything. I spent the next weekend getting my materials ready, and the first thing I did was reframe my profile. I put my NEET biology score front and center: 340/360, 99.2 percentile overall. I didn’t bury the fact that I’m a current med student, I led with it. A lot of people think being a student is a downside, but my senior was right that it’s the biggest selling point. I just went through the exam, I remember what it’s like to stay up all night memorizing the plant kingdom, I know which mnemonics actually stick, which topics NEET has been prioritizing the last two years. Parents and students don’t want someone who hasn’t taken the exam since the 90s; they want someone who just aced it.
Next, I made a sample video. I didn’t buy a fancy mic or a green screen. I leaned my phone against my stack of Gray’s Anatomy, propped my handwritten NEET notes up against the wall, and recorded a 4-minute lesson on the difference between C3 and C4 photosynthesis, a question that comes up almost every year. I ended it by pointing out the three most common mistakes students make on that question, the same ones I made when I first practiced. I uploaded it as an unlisted YouTube video, so I could link it in any application. That was enough. I didn’t need an hour-long demo reel.
Then I started applying. First, I filled out the “join as educator” forms on all the major platforms: Vedantu, Unacademy, Doubtnut, Toppr. But I didn’t stop there. I searched Instagram for “NEET UG biology coaching” and filtered for pages with 10k to 100k followers, not the big ones with millions. Those small creators are growing fast, they can’t afford full-time senior teachers, and they need part-time help that understands what current NEET students struggle with. I DM’d 14 of them, introduced myself, shared my score, linked my sample video, and said I was looking for 10-12 hours a week of work to cover my hostel costs. I got four replies, two gave me a 20-minute trial class, and one hired me as an assistant teacher for their 12th grade revision batch. I also got hired to do doubt solving on Doubtnut, 2 hours a day, paid per question cleared.
After a year and a half of doing this, the biggest thing I can tell other med students in my position is that entry-level roles are your foot in the door. Doubt solving pays less per hour than full classes, but it’s flexible. You can do it whenever you have 15 minutes free between lectures, and it gets you on the platform’s radar for higher-paying roles when they open up. After three months of doubt solving and assistant teaching, the small platform I was working for gave me my own weekend batch of 30 students, and that’s when my income jumped enough to cover all my living costs: rent, mess, groceries, even my bus ticket home for Diwali. I didn’t have to quit when classes got harder last semester; I just cut back my doubt solving hours to one a day instead of two.
The most common mistakes I see other students make are all avoidable. A lot of them think they need a perfect setup to start. You don’t. My first classes were recorded with my phone, against a plain hostel wall, I just hung a white bedsheet behind me to make it look cleaner. A 300 rupee lapel mic from Amazon was all I needed to make the audio clear, that’s it. A lot of people also only apply to the biggest platforms, and get discouraged when they don’t hear back. The small and mid-sized platforms and independent creators have way more openings, and they’re more willing to work around your med school class schedule. Another mistake: people don’t lean into what makes them different. As a current med student, you’re relatable. Your students can text you a doubt at 8 PM, and you can answer it within an hour, because you’re also up studying. That’s a huge advantage over a full-time teacher who ends their workday at 5.
Right now, I’m in second year, my course load is getting heavier, and I’m still tweaking my schedule to make it work. Some months I make a little extra and put it aside for next year’s textbooks, some months I have to pick up an extra shift or two to cover an unexpected expense. I still don’t have a huge following or a full-time contract with one of the top platforms, and I don’t know if I’ll keep doing this once I start my clinical rotations next year. But right now, it’s working. I get to help kids who are where I was just a couple of years ago, I don’t have to rely on my parents for every little thing, and I didn’t need any fancy experience or connections to get started.
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