In the NET held on 8th July 2018, out of 11,48,235 persons who registered. as many as 2,88, 737 candidates did not even appear for the exam. The number of aspirants who appeared for the exam was 8,59,498. Out of these, 55,872 aspirants were successful in reaching the cut off level in their respective subjects, thus becoming eligible to apply for the post of assistant professors in their respective domains in the institutions of higher learning across the country. This is 6.5 % of the total number of aspirants who actually participated. The number of aspirants who passed the eligibility levels for grant of Junior Research Fellowship (JRF) was only 3,929. This comes to only 0.46% of the total number of students who appeared for the UGC NET. When we aim for successes in life, there is need to introspect also as to why many talented aspirants fail repeatedly in the UGC NET. One of the major reasons is that a very large number of NET aspirants are not aable to grasp the crucial need of doing well in Paper 1. This year also, tens of thousands of very talented students failed to make it to the cut off list, despite doing well in the (subject ) Paper 2, simply because they did not pay requisite attention to master the subjects covered under Paper 1. One of the common mistakes made by a majority of UGC NET JRF aspirants is that instead of improving their semantic knowledge by developing good reading habits and paying minute attention to the subjects analysed in prestigious newspapers, they tend to rely entirely on half baked news coming in through whatsapp group networks, cheap guide books etc and are thus deprived of the skills needed to grasp the complexity of multi- dimensional issues affecting the society in general.