The Maharashtra Common Entrance Test (CET) Cell on Tuesday declared the result of the Maharashtra Common Entrance Test (MHT-CET), an entrance exam for engineering, pharmacy, agriculture, fisheries and daily technology. While the results were declared in percentile, in a first in the State, the cell’s office in Colaba received complaints of the results portal being slow and students confused about the new marking system.
For the first time this year, the MH-CET exam was conducted online in a span of 10 days, stretching between May 2 and 10. A total of 3,92,304 aspirants took the entrance exam online this year, as against 4,19,408 students who had appeared for the exam offline last year.
While Siddhant Kole (99.99%) and Navika Jastar (99.99%) were the top scorers from the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) in the combination of physics-chemistry-biology (PCB), Shreeraj Bhamare (99.99%) and Dhruvi Doshi (99.98%) scored high percentiles in the combination of physics-chemistry-mathematics (PCM) from MMR. In the State, Adarsh Abhange from Nanded and Vinayak Godbole from Solapur were announced as the top scorers.
While Ms. Doshi’s focus was on MHT-CET despite preparing for JEE-Mains simultaneously, Mr. Kole was preparing more for NEET-UG exams, the results for which are likely to be released on June 5. “I had given my best to prepare for MHT-CET as I wish to pursue computer science from Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute. My mother guided me all along my preparations and I feel really good to have scored well,” Ms. Doshi, a student of Prakash College, Kandivali, said.
Dhruvi Doshi scored 99.98% in the physics-chemistry-mathematics combination.
Mr. Kole, a student of Pace Junior College, Thane, said that he was testing his abilities by appearing for MHT-CET. “My main focus was NEET-UG and the pattern and portion for both the exams being similar helped me immensely,” he said.
‘Differences in scores’
Throughout the day, several aspirants complained of the portal’s server being slow or down, and differences in scores and the percentile. “There is a difference between the marks that I have scored and the percentile that I have received. The board says that it is not our fault and that the rules related to the percentile are clearly mentioned in the MHT-CET brochure released by the cell. We will write our grievances in writing to the cell,” a student, who visited the cell on Tuesday, said.
While officials from the CET Cell agreed that the server was down for a while, they said that their team worked to get it back up soon enough. An official from the Cell further stated that students should not compare their marks to the percentile calculated.
An official from the CET Cell said, “This is the method has been recommended by experts and is tested and accepted. Moreover, other competitive exams such as NEET and JEE use this pattern too. Percentile scores are based on the relative performance of all those who appear for the examination. The marks obtained are transformed into a scale ranging from 0 to 100.”
The official said that the percentile scores indicate the percentage of candidates who have scored below that particular score in the exam. he said, “So, the topper of the exam will get a percentile of 100. Besides this, the marks obtained in between the highest and lowest scores are also converted to appropriate percentiles. This score is calculated up to five decimal places to avoid bunching effect and reduce ties among scores.”
