CHENNAI/MADURAI: JUST 39.56 per cent of students from Tamil Nadu, who appeared for the exam, qualified in the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) 2018, according to data released by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) on Monday. This is a 0.72 per cent improvement over the 2017 performance.
As many as 1.14 lakh candidates from Tamil Nadu students appeared for NEET 2018, with 45,336 clearing the exam. The overall pass percentage lags behind states such as Rajasthan (74%), Delhi (74%) Andhra Pradesh (73%), Telangana (69%), Uttar Pradesh and Bihar (60% each). Nationally, 12.69 lakh candidates appeared for the test, of whom 7.14 lakh cleared it.
Keerthana K from PSBB KK Nagar, Chennai is the only student from Tamil Nadu to secure a rank in the top 50. She scored 676 out of 780 marks and secured all-India rank 12. She said this year’s NEET wasn’t as tough as last year’s. “When I came out of the exam centre, I knew that I’d done well, but I didn’t expect to score an All India Rank,” she said. Keerthana, who scored 494 in her CBSE class 12 results, said that going to coaching classes for competitive exams made a lot of difference to her preparation. While there is no official data on how many government school students qualified, students who took the exam in Tamil said their chances of making it to a good medical college were bleak. K Deshika from Madurai, who scored 1125 in the Class 12 State Board exam scored 263 out of 720 in NEET.
She said the Tamil technical terms used in the NEET paper were extremely different from the words used in her State Board textbook. “I knew that I hadn’t done well because I barely understood the question paper,” she said. Deshika attended the weekend coaching offered by the State government for two months and also took up the 28-day residential coaching in April. She plans to take a year off and attempt the exam again next year.
In 2017, NEET candidates were left hanging till the eleventh hour due to legal battles between the State and Centre. This year, the State it took efforts to prepare students by setting up free NEET coaching centres across Tamil Nadu. However, CBSE drew fire for not arranging for enough centres in the State, forcing a lot of students, especially from southern districts, to travel out of state to take the NEET.
It may be noted that there are 5,660 seats in 45 medical colleges in Tamil Nadu.