NEET cut-off down, but competition to go up

The overall NEET 2018 cutoff may be down from 131 in 2017 to 119 this year, but that doesn’t mean a seat of your choice is guaranteed. With an increase of 1.3 lakh qualifiers across the country this year (12,766 in Tamil Nadu), lower cut-off and reduction of seats in the state quota, the competition has become tougher. The cut-off for reserved categories too has come down to 96 this year compared to last year’s 107.

The fact that the physics and chemistry sections were tougher compared to last year could have led to the lowering of the overall cut-off, said

Sourav Mondal

, centre head, Coimbatore FIITJEE.

Students in the state, however, seem to have fared better with an increase in the pass percentage by 0.72%. In Tamil Nadu, the number of registrations as well as qualifiers went up this year — 45,336 candidates qualified against 32, 570 last year.

“From the feedback we received, a lot of students have performed well and especially those in reserved categories have secured good marks. The cut-off for Tamil Nadu medical admissions, however, is only expected to rise,” said educationist

Jayaprakash Gandhi

.

With more number of candidates qualifying, benefits that might have accrued due to fall in qualifying mark (cut-off) across all categories might be negated, said experts.

“This fall has not necessarily brought cheer to students this year because of a spurt in the number of NEET-qualified candidates by more than 1.03 lakh students,” said

N Balamurugan

, a medical education consultant with Click&Pro. Pointing out that the CBSE was yet to release the marks across different mark range in the state, he said that an average of about a dozen students would be competing for an MBBS seat across the country.

An estimated 61,390 MBBS seats are available in the 476 medical colleges and deemed universities in the state, Balamurugan said, adding that “medical seat-student ratio is 1:11.6 which is quite tough.” The total number of seats in the 22 government medical colleges is 2,900. From this, 15% will go to the all-India pool and the rest is for state students, said

G Selvaraj

, secretary,

Tamil Nadu Medical Selection Committee

.

In terms of the number of qualifiers, Tamil Nadu stands sixth among states after Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Karnataka. The number of students who wrote the paper in Tamil this year was 24,720. However, following the test complaints of errors in the Tamil version of the paper were raised by a section of candidates.