MHT-CET: Small-town boys emerge toppers

Aadarsh Abhange from Nanded district, Vinayak Godbole from Pandharpur score 100 percentile; officials say switch from percentage to normalise score

Two students from Maharashtra’s small towns emerged toppers in the state’s common entrance test (MHT-CET) for engineering, pharmacy and agriculture courses, as the results were declared on Tuesday.

Students at MHT-CET exam in 2018. (FOR REPRESENTATION/ HT FILE)

Aadarsh Abhange, a scheduled caste (SC) student from Kinwat in Nanded district, whose father teaches in a zilla parishad primary school, scored the highest – 100 percentile – in physics-chemistry-mathematics (PCM) category. Vinayak Godbole, son of a court-typist couple in Pandharpur (Solapur) district, who studied in a local Marathi-medium school, got the same score in physics-chemistry-mathematics (PCM) category. Both the students said they didn’t expect this result. “I give credit for my success to the motivation and support from parents and teachers. I mostly studied from textbooks and some reference books,” said Godbole. He is now awaiting the result of national-eligibility-cum-entrance test (NEET), the national entrance test for health science courses, before deciding on his course of action.

Abhange is also awaiting the results of the joint entrance examination (advanced), the gateway to top engineering colleges in the country, but he has made up his mind. “I am hoping to get a computer science seat in one of the IITs, preferably Bombay, Delhi or Kharagpur,” he said. He added that regular self-study was key to his success, although he enrolled in four different coaching classes in Nanded to train for the subjects.

In a first, the state CET cell used percentiles instead of percentages to mark students in the test, which was taken by 3.92 lakh students from across the state. This is because the examination was for the first time held online over 10 days and 19 shifts, with multiple sets of question papers.

“Due to the different sets of question papers used in different shifts, we needed to normalise marks to bring equity in scores. Hence, instead of giving out marks, we gave percentiles. We have followed in the footsteps of other national tests. Our scores are accurate up to seven decimal points,” said a CET cell official.

Percentile scores are relative scores based on the performance of all candidates. “Normalisation is a positive step as it adjusts the difficulty level across different sessions of the examination, making it a level-playing field. The next set of reforms should include multiple attempts on a given day,” Ashutosh Paibhale, founder and managing director, eSquareMC, an education and management consulting firm.