JAIPUR/ROURKELA: Odisha’S Soyeb Aftab and Delhi’s Akanksha Singh entered into record books on Friday by scoring full 720 marks in the National Eligibility-cum -Entrance Test (NEET) — the first ever such instance in the exam for admission to undergraduate medical courses.
With eight entrants, Andhra Pradesh has the highest representation in the list of top 50 candidates.
While Soyeb and Akansha both scored identical marks, the Rourkela teenager topped the test followed by the Delhi girl in the NEET 2020 list.
The formula for rank determination in case of a tie is that the scores of biology, chemistry, and physics are taken into account, an National Testing Agency official said.
If all the marks are still the same, the official said, the tie is broken by whoever is older. In Jaipur, Soyeb and his family were was cynosure of all eyes. The NEET topper’s family, especially parents, could hardly contain their joy.
The 19-year-old from Rourkela had enrolled himself at a top coaching institute of Kota.
Besides thanking his teachers, Soyeb especially thanked his mother Sultana Nazir who stayed with him in Kota over the past two years as he prepared for the NEET exam.
“There is no alternative for hard work. I just followed what my teachers told me to do but I had never thought of securing 100 per cent marks. My aim was just to get selected in the exam,” he said.
The teenager conceded that his hopes kept soaring since he was consistently doing well in all exams in the last two years.
“As my marks increased slowly, my expectations soared and I aspired to achieve rank among top 100. In 12th exams, there was not much fluctuation in my performance and I was consistently getting around 700 marks.” Back in Odisha, the Steel City erupted in joy.
“When all students had left Kota fearing spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, Soyeb stayed there with focus on study. It should be a message for others not to take recourse to excuses and back off from hard work as risk comes to life naturally,” Soyeb’s father Sheikh Mohammed Abbas said.
Soyeb did his Class X from Desouza’s School in Rourkela in 2018 before he moved to Kota.
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