HYDERABAD: Have the aspirants to medical college seats, who have been subjected to much mental agony being sandwiched between NEET and EAMCET, lost their interest to retake the state’s entrance test?
It seems so going by the low number of applications submitted online. Though the deadline for submission of online application without late fee ended on June 14, only 56,171 students have registered for the examination so far. The number is unlikely to go up as the fine for late submission is as high as ` 10,000 which can be dissuading factor.
B Karunakar Reddy, vice-chancellor of Kaloji Narayana Rao University of Health Sciences, tries to explain the possible reasons for the lukewarm response. “The average and below-average students who are quite sure that they won’t get a medical college seat might have opted out of the exam. Also, students from Andhra Pradesh, who wrote EAMCET-I, might have dropped out as their results are out. So, we might have lost about 5,000 candidates from AP. Also, those wanting to get a seat in the management quota would take NEET. We expected about 60,000 applications and got 56,000. I dont think the number is too low,” he says.
Agreeing with him, NV Ramana Rao, convener, EAMCET-2016, says, “We have only 3,500 seats and those students who have not qualified in EAMCET 1, will anyway not apply and there are also chances that those who did not get good marks will have second thoughts now as they have taken the exam for the second time. So I don’t think the number is less. In fact, it is quite big in terms of competition.”
Although officials say that the decline in the number of applications has nothing to do with NEET confusion, parents are of the opinion that it is hard to believe that nearly 40,000 students have dropped the idea of retaking the exam for no particular reason or just because they realised that they would anyway not get a seat. “Why would anyone back off when there is still a chance? Students take long-term coaching to appear for the exam. So no one would skip the exam just because they have a doubt over securing a seat. ” V Uma, a parent, says.