Arka Chatterjee is toying between two options — Medical College and Hospital, Calcutta and All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Bhubaneswar.

The resident of Sun City in Ultadanga was set to join the former, thanks to his rank of 1,069 in the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), but Monday upset his calculations. “I was out with friends when I got a call from my mother saying that I had got a rank of 90 in the AIIMS entrance. This was beyond my expectations,” he says.

But he is still unlikely to get into AIIMS, Delhi as only 50 of the 100 seats are open to general category students. “My parents and I are going to Bhubaneswar on June 25 to check out their facilities.” The Chatterjees are both doctors with the railways, his father being an orthopaedic and his mother a general physician.

With an aggregate of 97.8 per cent in his CBSE Class XII finals, Arka has come fourth in the state. “We were called for a felicitation by chief minister Mamata Banerjee at Netaji Indoor Stadium.” A student of Pandit Ajoy Chakrabarty’s school Shrutinandan from Class II to VII, Arka even sang a Rabindrasangeet at the felicitation programme.

An ICSE state topper with 98.8 per cent in 2016, Arka planned to shift from La Martiniere for Boys to a CBSE school for Plus II as NEET is conducted by the board. So he enrolled with Bodhicarya S.S. School in New Town and attended classes for competitive exams at Narayana School in Class XI. “Frankly speaking, I was getting so little time for studying on my own that I stopped going to Narayana in the final year and attended school only to keep the minimum attendance. Rest of the time I was at home,” he says. He had a tutor in each of the science subjects and sat for exams in a distance learning programme of a private coaching institute.

Arka insists that he did not go overboard with studies. “I am a Bollywood buff and watched 76 films in these two years. All I did was study regularly and not get stressed thinking I was competing with 14 lakh students.”

It is a wrong notion, he says, that one has to prepare separately for the Board exams and competitive tests. “Following NCERT text books is 80 per cent preparation for NEET too. All you got to do extra is follow some reference books.” He was demoralised after  making some “careless mistakes” in NEET. “So the AIIMS rank came as a pleasant surprise.”

A fan of Bangla bands, especially the Fossils front man Rupam Islam, he was active in the La Martiniere debating, elocution and drama circles. He hopes to resume those extra-curricular activities in college. As for films, his favourites is recent years has been Pink “by far” and the more recent Raazi.

His dream is to keep a “family tradition” alive. “My grandfather, Sushovan Banerjee, is a doctor too. In Bolpur, he is known as ‘ek takar doctor’. He was once an MLA there in the 1980s. Even at 79, he checks patients for a fee of Re 1.”