How I Got a NEET UG Biology Teaching Job on EdTech To Cover Med School Living Costs
The hostel fan rattled above my bed last September, and I stared at the screen of my 3-year-old laptop, coffee gone cold beside the printed mess bill. The new hike had pushed my monthly living costs 3,500 rupees over what my parents could send that month, after they’d paid for my semester’s new anatomy textbooks. I’d cleared NEET UG just two years prior, aced biology, and had spent three months helping my younger cousin work through his weak spots before he took the exam. I knew I could teach this. I just had no clue how to get a teaching spot on an edtech platform to make the extra cash.
I made the first mistake most people make: I spammed 12 applications in one night, copied the same generic resume into every form, and put “MBBS student looking for part time work” as my headline. Two weeks later, I had four rejections and eight unanswered applications. I ran into Rishabh, a final year senior who’d been teaching NEET biology part time for two years, at the college canteen, and we split a plate of oily samosas while I complained about my luck. He pointed out the obvious problem I’d missed: edtech platforms don’t hire people who just need extra cash. They hire people who can help NEET aspirants score better. My profile didn’t say a single thing about what I could offer students, just that I needed money.
He walked me through the first small change that made all the difference: make a short demo clip. Not a full 30-minute lecture, just 2 to 3 minutes of you teaching a high-weightage, common tricky topic that every NEET student struggles with. I picked mitosis vs meiosis, because that’s the first big topic students mess up, and it’s worth at least two marks every year. I bought a 200-rupee small whiteboard from the stationery shop down the road, cleaned the blank wall behind my desk, turned off the rattling fan for two minutes so the audio wouldn’t be crackly, and filmed the whole thing on my phone. I didn’t add fancy graphics or edit out every small cough. I just wrote the two most common mistakes students make on the board, gave the mnemonic I used to remember the order of steps, and wrapped it up. I cut the 10-minute raw take down to 2 minutes 15 seconds with a free phone editing app, and that was my demo done.
Next, he told me to stop spamming the same application to every platform and tailor each one to the site. Big names like Unacademy or Aakash BYJU’S look for different experience than small, niche platforms that only cater to NEET aspirants. For every application, I moved my NEET scorecard to the top of my profile, instead of tucking it at the bottom under my MBBS details. Edtechs need proof you know the exam you’re teaching, and my biggest advantage wasn’t that I was studying medicine now—it was that I’d taken NEET just two years prior, so I still remembered exactly what it feels like to struggle with remembering all the botany families or confusing the different types of plant tissue. I put that right in my profile summary: “Cleared NEET UG 2022 with 640/720 in Biology, currently MBBS second year, teach using the same mnemonics and shortcut tricks I used to score high.” That’s all it took to make my profile stand out from the dozens of generic applications.
I also learned that most new teachers only apply to the big platforms, but smaller niche NEET platforms are way more open to part time med students with flexible schedules. They often need teachers for weekend batches and evening doubt-clearing slots that full-time, experienced faculty don’t want. I found three open vacancies in a single week just by searching “part time NEET UG biology teaching vacancy” on LinkedIn, and checking two private Facebook groups for NEET aspirants and new educators. One of those groups had a post from a new platform looking for part time biology teachers, and that’s where I got my first callback.
The last concrete tip that helped me was to be upfront about my availability from the start. I didn’t lie and say I could work 20 hours a week when I have 8 hours of classes and practicals five days a week. I told them I could take four 1-hour classes on Saturday and Sunday, and two 1-hour doubt clearing sessions after 6 pm on weekdays. That worked out perfectly because they had exactly those slots open, and no one else had taken them. It also means I never miss my own classes or cut into my study time, which is non-negotiable for med school.
If I hadn’t gotten that first spot, I planned to start with small 5-10 student batches on Telegram to build up student reviews, then use those reviews to apply to edtech platforms. A friend of mine did exactly that, and after six months of small batch teaching, she got picked up as a part-time faculty at a mid-sized edtech platform.
I’ve been teaching there for six months now. I make enough to cover my mess bill, my stationery costs, the occasional bus ticket home, and I just bought a new stethoscope I’ve been needing with my last paycheck. I don’t make a ton of money, it’s just enough to cover my extra living costs, which is all I wanted. Some months, when I have internal exams, I swap a couple classes with another med student teacher who also has a flexible schedule, and the platform is fine with that. Next semester, my clinical rotations will start, so I’ll probably have to cut back to three classes a week. I’m still figuring out the balance, but it’s working for now. I didn’t need a fancy degree or a home studio to get started. I just had to show platforms that I know what NEET students need, and that I can show up consistently for the slots I say I can. That’s all it really takes.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » How I Got a NEET UG Biology Teaching Job on EdTech To Cover Med School Living Costs