NEET results: Four students from Maharashtra make it to top 50

The results for the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) for admissions to undergraduate medical and dental courses were released by the National Testing

The results for the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) for admissions to undergraduate medical and dental courses were released by the National Testing Agency (NTA) late on Friday.

State topper Ashish Zantye (centre) with his parents.

This year, four students from Maharashtra made it to the top-50 rank. Eighteen-year-old Ashish Zantye from Malwan, Sindhudurg district, with an all-India rank 19 is the state’s topper, after securing 710 marks out of the total score of 720. While he attended his junior college on weekdays, Zantye travelled to Goa during weekends to prepare for his entrance exam with a local coaching institute.

“Many students in Malwan prepare for the all-India entrance exams by traveling to Goa over the weekends. My focus was on performing well in the Class 12 boards as well as in NEET. I hope to bag a seat either in AIIMS (All India Institute of Medical Sciences), Delhi, or KEM Hospital (King Edward Memorial) in Mumbai for my MBBS degree,” said Zantye, whose mother is a gynaecologist and father a physician.

“I’ll either pursue higher education in radiology or in a non-clinical field, including research,” added Zantye.

The others three students who made it to the top 50 are Tejomoy Vadiya (43rd rank), Parth Kadam (45th rank) and Abhay Chillarge (46th rank).

This year, NTA had received the highest registrations ever, with 15.97 lakh candidates registering for the exam. Of these, 13.66 lakh students appeared for the exam and 7.71 lakh have now qualified for admissions.

Like the past few years, Maharashtra accounted for the highest number of registered candidates for the national medical entrance test with 2.27 lakh students registering for the test. Out of the 1.95 lakh students who appeared for the exam this year, only 79,974 qualified for admissions to undergraduate medical and dental seats, which is the lowest among all the states in India.

The qualifying criteria for aspirants in the open category stood at 50 percentile this year also. The eligibility for reserved categories including Other Backward Classes (OBC), Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) stands at 40 percentile and above. The cut-offs to qualify for the exam increased marginally from 119 in 2018 to 134 this year.

NTA had released the final answer key for the entrance exam in the afternoon but did not accept a single challenge raised by students this year too.

“Many students had challenged two questions specifically from the Biology section and had approached the examination authority with proof. The NTA should scrap the process of challenges because students end up wasting Rs1,000 for every question that they challenge, and in the end are left dejected,” said Akruti Patel, parent of one of the medical aspirants.