NORCET 11 AIR 19: How Muzzamil Ahmad Went From 38.8% to 82.7%

Quick answer: Muzzamil Ahmad secured All India Rank 19 in NORCET 11 Mains 2026. His first NPrep test, taken around 31 July, scored 38.8%. His last one scored 82.7%. He practised roughly 9,000 questions, was already working as a nursing officer at AIIMS Jammu, and prepared a second time purely to transfer to AIIMS Awantipora near his family in Kashmir. He is one of 38 NPrep students in the All-India top 100 in NORCET 11.

---

He was already selected. He did it again anyway.

Most NORCET stories are about getting in. This one is about getting home.

Muzzamil was already a nursing officer at AIIMS Jammu when he started preparing for NORCET 11. There was no financial pressure driving it and no unemployment to escape. The new AIIMS at Awantipora had opened, and Awantipora is in Kashmir, where his family is.

Asked where he would go now, he did not name the institute first. He said Kashmir, my own place — and then mentioned AIIMS Awantipora almost as an afterthought. Asked what the whole effort had been for, his answer was short: the entire struggle had been for exactly that.

It is worth sitting with that for a second if you are preparing while already employed. Proximity to family is a legitimate reason to sit an exam again.

The score climb: 38.8% to 82.7%

Interviewer and candidate went straight to the numbers.

	Score
First test (around 31 July)	38.8%
Final score	82.7%

Asked what he remembered of that first paper, he did not dress it up. The marks were not good. That was the whole answer.

His framing of the gap between the two numbers is the useful part: going from the lowest to the highest took a great deal of time. Not a trick, not a hack, not a shortcut he discovered in week three. Time.

If you have just taken a diagnostic test and scored in the thirties, this is the relevant data point. A 38.8% start is compatible with an All-India Rank of 19 in the same cycle.

The ten things, because he refused to name one

Asked the standard question — what one thing helped most — he declined the premise outright. His reasoning: if only one thing had been good, he would not be sitting in that interview at all.

So he listed them instead, and offered to count them on his fingers:

• The app
• The interface
• Customer support
• The way NPrep connects with students
• The test series
• The rationales
• The team's effort behind all of it

It is a small moment, but it tells you something about how he studied. He was not looking for the one feature that would carry him. He was using the whole thing.

What he actually wanted from the rationales

Two specific reasons, and both are worth copying.

First, learning from the wrong answer. When a question went wrong, he could read precisely why it went wrong rather than just noting the correct option and moving on.

Second, detail that replaced the textbook. The rationales were detailed enough that he did not need to open a book alongside them. For a working nursing officer studying in the gaps around duty, removing a step from the loop matters more than it sounds.

Across the preparation he practised around 9,000 questions. He was not counting at the time. He was simply giving them.

The part where he refuses to overclaim

This is the most credible stretch of the interview, and it is worth reading carefully, because it cuts against what topper content usually sounds like.

Asked how similar NPrep's questions felt to the real NORCET paper, he pushed back on the premise. AIIMS, he said, will maintain its own standard however hard anyone tries to match it.

Then he drew the distinction that actually matters:

Similar means the pattern is the same. Not the questions.

He confirmed that two or three questions did come to him directly from the app. And then he explicitly refused to make the bigger claim — he would not say, as he put it others do, that 140 of 160 questions were matches.

What he did credit specifically was the Prelims-style questions inside Nashta and the Pre-Boards, which he said gave an exact NORCET feel.

A topper who tells you the limits of the thing that helped him is a topper worth listening to.

The level argument: A and B

His mental model for why practice should feel harder than the exam is the cleanest version of this idea in any of the NORCET 11 interviews.

Treat NORCET as level A. Your test series has to sit at level B, above it. Only by practising above the exam's level can you match it on the day. Stay below it, and you will never match up.

The interviewer's completion of the thought: exam day adds pressure factors that pull performance down — nerves, time, the hall, the clock. If your practice environment is harder than the exam, those two effects cancel out.

This is also why he valued NPrep keeping its level slightly higher rather than making candidates feel good with easy papers.

Did the mock rank predict the real one?

Yes, and closely.

	Rank
Typical Nashta rank	Under 50
Actual NORCET 11 Mains	19

He stayed consistently under rank 50 across Nashta tests. He finished at 19. This pattern repeats across the NORCET 11 cohort — Soniya at AIR 91 had a Nashta rank of 81 before the exam, and Nandini Gurjar at AIR 226 had Nashta ranks ranging between 1 and 250.

If you are taking full-length mocks under honest conditions, your mock rank is not noise. Treat it as information.

What to take from AIR 19

1. A bad first test is a starting point, not a verdict. 38.8% to 82.7% in one cycle.
2. Practise above the exam's level, so that exam-day pressure has somewhere to be absorbed.
3. Read the rationale on wrong answers specifically, not just the correct option.
4. Watch your mock rank. Under 50 in practice became 19 in reality.
5. You can prepare again from inside a government post. Wanting a posting closer to home is reason enough.

---

Frequently asked questions

What rank did Muzzamil Ahmad get in NORCET 11? He secured All India Rank 19 in NORCET 11 Mains 2026.

What was his score improvement? His first NPrep test scored 38.8%, taken around 31 July. His final score was 82.7%.

How many questions did he practise? Approximately 9,000 questions.

Was he already working when he prepared? Yes. He was already a nursing officer at AIIMS Jammu and prepared again in order to transfer to AIIMS Awantipora, closer to his family in Kashmir.

Did NPrep questions appear in the real NORCET 11 exam? He said two or three questions came directly from the app, and specifically declined to claim more than that. What he credited was the pattern matching, particularly in the Nashta and Pre-Board Prelims questions.

---

Read the full list of NORCET 11 toppers who prepared with NPrep — 1 in 5 NORCET 11 Mains qualifiers came from NPrep: 2,178+ students qualified, 38 of them in the All-India top 100.