A section of candidates who attempted the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) in Chennai on Sunday for admissions to medical courses felt that the paper was easy.
“All questions in the biology section were from the NCERT books. Physics was difficult because the questions were worded tricky,” said Ekta Mittal, who took the test for the first time. She had pursued an integrated program with her school, and had been preparing for the exam since Class XI.
In the State, over 1.5 lakh people had registered for the test, which was held in 499 centres. As many as 24 lakh candidates had registered for the exam across the country. Candidates whom this correspondent spoke to said that they had attended either in-person classes at private coaching centres – from month-long crash courses to year-long courses, or integrated classes – or attended tuitions. “The NEET syllabus was reduced, making it easy for students to prepare. This year’s chemistry questions were easier than last year. There were many direct questions, particularly from the SCERT textbook,” said V. Ezhilarasi, teacher at the Government Girls Higher Secondary School in Ashok Nagar. P. Radhika, who had prepared for the exam by herself, said that she found the paper “easy to tackle”, and only physics questions took some extra time to solve. Government school students, who were spoken to, too found the paper easy. “I had prepared for the exam only over the last month as I had to concentrate on my Class XII public exams. The exam was easy, and even physics questions were manageable. Only repeated practice was necessary,” said T. Kavitha, a student of Government Girls Higher Secondary School, Ashok Nagar. She had attended tuition classes and relied on YouTube videos to prepare for the test.
A section of students who had taken up the one-month crash course offered by the State government for the test, found that most of the questions were from their textbooks. “Only about 5% of the questions were from outside the textbook content, but the questions were easy overall,” said Priya. S, a government school student.
