Stressful Courses: Why Some Degrees Break Students and How to Survive Them

When we talk about stressful courses, educational paths that demand extreme mental, emotional, and physical endurance. Also known as high-pressure academic programs, they’re not just hard—they’re designed to filter out everyone but the most persistent. In India, this isn’t theoretical. It’s daily life for millions. Think of the NEET preparation, the grueling path to medical school that turns high schoolers into full-time memorizers. Or the IIT JEE coaching, a system where kids wake up at 5 a.m., study 14 hours a day, and still fear falling behind. These aren’t just exams. They’re marathons with no finish line in sight.

It’s not just pre-university. The MBA stress, the constant pressure to perform, network, and land internships while drowning in case studies hits hard too. Students who thought college was over find themselves in a new kind of rat race—where your grade point isn’t just a number, it’s your ticket to a job that might not even exist by the time you graduate. Then there’s the CPA exam, a certification no one talks about until you’re sitting in a quiet room at 2 a.m., staring at tax codes like they’re ancient runes. These aren’t courses you take. They’re identities you adopt.

What ties them all together? The belief that suffering equals success. That if you’re not exhausted, you’re not trying hard enough. But here’s the truth: the most successful people in these programs aren’t the ones who study the longest. They’re the ones who learned how to rest without guilt, how to ask for help without shame, and how to separate their worth from their scores. Below, you’ll find real stories from people who walked through these fires—whether they were 50 and learning to code, a NEET aspirant who cracked it after three tries, or an MBA grad who quit corporate life to start a small business. These aren’t success stories. They’re survival stories. And they’re the only ones that matter.