We were all there once —
refreshing a counselling list at 2 a.m.
Trying to decide three years of our life from a Telegram forward.
How this started
Every year, thousands of doctors in India finish MBBS and face the same few days. A rank. A seat matrix. A list of colleges they have never visited, in cities they have never lived in, offering training they have never seen. And a deadline.
The information that would actually help — what the duty hours are really like, whether the stipend arrives on time, whether the department teaches you or just uses you, whether the hostel is habitable — exists. It sits with the residents already training there. It just has no way of reaching the person who needs it.
So it travels through Telegram groups instead, where nobody’s name is attached to anything, a screenshot from 2019 still circulates as current, and the person confidently describing a surgery department may never have set foot in it.
Dr. Krishna Agrawal
My story
I loved medicine from my first year of MBBS. I worked hard for it, got a rank I was proud of, and chose General Medicine at an institute in Aurangabad. It felt like the decision was going well.
The first few months were fine. Then things started to slip.
Our stipends stopped. Not for a few weeks — for nine consecutive months. Every time we raised it, we were given a reason that didn’t hold up, and then another one the following month. Meanwhile there was no mess, so we spent the little time we had off looking for food or arranging tiffins. Accommodation was inadequate. We were working around 120 hours a week, with no days off, no library, and no real academic support. There was no culture to speak of — just work.
Eventually we escalated it to the NBE. They inspected the institute, and it lost its accreditation for General Medicine. We were transferred elsewhere and I finished my training.
But the whole process took about a year. That year is gone. It came out of my residency, and out of the residency of everyone in my batch.
“Here is the part I keep coming back to. None of it was secret. The residents already there knew all of it — the stipend arrears, the hours, the missing mess, the absent teaching. If I had spoken to any one of them for fifteen minutes before I filled my choices, I would have chosen differently.
Nobody told me, because there was no way for anyone to tell me.”
That’s what ResidentConnect is. A way for the person who already knows to tell you, before you decide.
Why we built this
We built ResidentConnect to close that gap in the simplest way we could think of: let students talk to the people who actually know.
Not an anonymous review. Not an average of strangers’ opinions. A real, verified doctor, currently training at the place you’re considering, on a call with you for fifteen minutes.
Residents get paid for their time — because it is time, and because a doctor coming off a night shift deserves more than a thank-you for helping someone they have never met. Students pay a few hundred rupees to avoid a decision that costs them a year.
That’s the whole idea. We’ve tried very hard not to make it more complicated than that.
What we do
Verified residents, not anonymous accounts
Every doctor on ResidentConnect has been checked — identity, qualification, and the fact that they are training where their profile says. You will know exactly who you are talking to.
A private conversation, not a comment thread
Fifteen to twenty minutes, one to one, on video or phone. Ask the specific questions you would never post in a public group.
Their experience, honestly
Residents are asked to tell you what it is actually like — including the parts that are unflattering. They are paid for their time, by you, and by nobody else.
Being clear about what this isn't
We think you should know the limits of what we offer, before you pay for anything.
- We don’t give medical or legal advice. Residents will decline those questions, and they’re right to.
- We can’t influence any seat, rank or allotment. Nobody can. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something else.
- We don’t rank colleges. We don’t publish biased scores or league tables about hospitals. We introduce you to people who work in them, and you form your own view.
- Residents speak for themselves, never for their institution. What you hear is one person’s experience — honest, but personal, and not an official position.
- Information goes out of date. Departments change, faculty move, policies get rewritten. Verify anything that matters through official sources before you act on it.