Just 5% skip NEET marked by stringent checks & dress code

CHENNAI: Of the 1.07 lakh candidates registered for the National-Eligibility-cum-Entrance-Test for admission to medical courses in TN, nearly 5,000 students skipped the exam on Sunday marked by stringent checks and tough dress code to avoid malpractices.


“In Chennai, just 5 % of the total 33,800 candidates failed to turn up,” K Srinivasan, CBSE Regional Officer, Chennai, said. “Turnout was positive with absenteeism in single digits in most of the 49 city exam centres,” he said.

Candidates had a tough time at the exam centres due to the stringent frisking, including metal detector checks, done by the authorities. Some students even complained that their sacred threads were cut and they were asked to untie their hair.

While most students found biology part to be easy, chemistry and physics sections were tougher as most questions were from Class 11NCERT portion. In one Madurai centre, 120 candidates were issued Hindi version of the paper and were made to wait till afternoon.


CUT OUT FOR JOB: A sacred thread tied to the wrist of a student being cut before NEET in Chennai on Sunday | REPORT: P 2, 8

Most questions based on NCERT textbooks

They were given photocopies of the Tamil question paper but were asked to answer in the OMR sheet of the Hindi question paper. Rattled by the turn of events, many students said their MBBS dreams were as good as over. Exams were again conducted for these candidates. CBSE attributed the confusion to ‘administrative reasons’.

The goof-up happened at

Noyes Matriculation School

at

Narimedu

which had a total of 568 students sitting for the examination. When the first batch of students came out after the exam around 1pm, many parents couldn’t spot their wards. C Shanmugam of Theni found that his son Mahendran had come out, but not his elder son. After waiting for about half an hour, the parents gheraoed the school principal who told them that their children had been given Hindi question papers. They were waiting for the Tamil question papers to be sent from New Delhi. “Nearly 15 to 20 physics questions involved complex derivations and we had to use multiple formulae to solve every question,” said M Deepak who wrote the test in Sholinganallur. Many students said that they avoided answering the toughies to escape negative marks.

Most of the questions were based on NCERT books, widely used by CBSE schools, said Mohammed Askar, a Theni student.

Uday Nath Mishra

, chief academic officer at training institute

BasicFirst

, said, “NEET 2018 was easy to moderate with 170 questions based on NCERT. Ten questions were tricky as they interlinked two topics.”

This indicated that CBSE students might have an edge over their TN state board peers when it came to admissions under the 15 % All

India Quota

, say experts. However, unlike the previous year, there were no translation-related goof-ups.

Many government school students found the test very difficult and the TN school education department admitted as much, promising to improve its coaching methodologies.

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