CHENNAI: The number of students who had qualified in the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET)-UG in Tamil Nadu recorded a marginal dip of 2.2 percentage points in the results declared by the National Testing Agency (NTA) on Saturday. Of the 1.36 lakh TN students who had appeared for the test this year, 76,181 have qualified (56.1%), a tad lower than the last year’s 58.3%. Since there is a drop in score across the country, with the top mark being 686, the lowest since 2019, the cut-off for MBBS admission may drop by 60 to 70 marks.
The drop in number of qualifying candidates and failure of Tamil Nadu students to make it to the top 25 ranks, may set tongues wagging as all the TN political parties, except the BJP, have opposed the test saying that it puts poor, rural students at a disadvantage and the centre must give exemption to TN students from the test.The topper from Tamil Nadu, S Soorya Narayanan of Tirunelveli district, secured an All India Rank (AIR) of 27. Last year, P Rajaneesh from the state was among the 17 students who secured first rank by scoring a perfect 720 out of 720. In 2023, J Prabanjan from TN shared AIR 1 with another student from Andhra Pradesh by scoring 720.Moreover, five students from Tamil Nadu secured a spot among the top 25 in 2023.
Besides Soorya Narayanan, five more students made it to the top 100 AIR this year, compared to 10 students in 2024.
In a first in past five years, TN sees drop in number of state students appearing for NEET
The other five are Abhineet Nagaraj (AIR 50), GS Pugazhendhi (AIR 61), KS Hruthik Vijaya Raja (AIR 63), AJ Rakesh (AIR 78), and G Prajan Srivari (AIR 88). Experts attributed the dip in scores to the increased difficulty of this year’s question paper. “While many students scored perfect marks (nationwide) last year, the top score this year was just 686. Although the decline was seen across the country, the impact is more pronounced in TN,” said a NEET coaching expert.
Career consultant Jayaprakash Gandhi pointed out that while performance of the state’s top-tier has declined, many students managed to feature in the top 500 ranks. “In previous years, questions were more direct, often formula-based or memory oriented. This year’s paper was more analytical and required strong conceptual clarity,” he said.
According to Gandhi, TN students tend to struggle when question papers are more concept-heavy, whereas students from states like Rajasthan manage to perform well consistently. “Students need to build strong conceptual foundations in Classes 10 and 11 before moving on to advanced topics,” he said, adding that the cut-off is expected to come down by 100 marks compared to last year.
This year was also the first time the number of students appearing for the exam from Tamil Nadu saw a drop, at least in the last five years. However, a similar trend was observed this year at the national level.
A NEET coaching expert, who preferred not to be quoted, said that one of the reasons for the drop could be a growing interest in engineering courses as there is a general perception that a student will invariably require one more year after Class 12 to prepare for NEET. “However, we need to observe the trend for at least another year before drawing conclusions,” the expert added.
The number of students, who took the examination this year in Tamil also witnessed a sharp drop by nearly 27% from 36,335 in 2024 to 26,580 in 2025.
Speaking to TNIE, S Subbulakshmi, Soorya Narayanan’s mother said, her son, a student of Pushpalata Vidya Mandir CBSE School in Tirunelveli, had also secured AIR 388 in JEE Advanced and has already secured a seat in electrical engineering in IIT-Madras. However, he would aspire to join MBBS in AIIMS, New Delhi.
While Subbulakshmi is a homemaker, Soorya Narayanan’s father M Sankar Subramanian works as a travelling ticket examiner in the railways. In Class 12, Soorya Narayanan had scored centum in Maths and Chemistry, 99 in Physics and 98 in Biology.
(With inputs from M Abdul Rabi @ Tirunelveli)