This year’s NEET was slightly easier than the one last year. But for admission to a government medical college, a score of over 500 would be needed, experts said. They expected the qualifying score to be around 140-150 marks for the general category.
Though most questions were not time-consuming, there were similarities between the weightage of marks in this paper and the Class 12 syllabus. Though there were almost an equal number of questions from Class 11 and Class 12 chemistry and physics, the chemistry questions were said to have been easier, while physics had calculation-based questions.
“Only those who understand the concept well would have been able to attempt the questions confidently,” said S. Sree Rangapriya of Coimbatore. Violet Priscilla of Chennai said she attempted only eight questions in physics and 35 in chemistry, fearing negative marks for wrong answers. She hopes to score 400 marks. D. Srivarshini of Sirumugai, who took the test in Coimbatore, said she also followed a similar approach.
However, Franklin Jacob from Nagercoil, who took the test in Chennai, said he did better in the physics section.
Biology, a breeze
“A majority of students would have found the physics section a tad difficult as there were some good conceptual questions thrown in. Any score in excess of 525 should get the students admission in top colleges through the State quota,” said Anand Nagarajan, academic head for school division, T.I.M.E. Chennai.
The physics section was the toughest and was lengthy, with 24 questions from Class 12 and 21 from Class 11 syllabus. “The section had two difficult questions, nine moderately tough questions and 34 easy questions,” said Rajshekhar Ratrey, vice president, educational content, Toppr.com.
Most questions in chemistry were based on simple concepts. With an equal number of questions from Class 11 and Class 12 syllabi, students had to answer one difficult question, 20 moderately difficult questions and 24 easy questions.
Students found biology easier than physics and chemistry as unlike last year, it had very few application-oriented questions. There were 46 questions from Class 12 and 44 from Class 11 syllabi. The section had 9 difficult questions, 33 moderately difficult questions and 18 easy questions.
“As many as 170 questions were based on the NCERT syllabus and only 10 were tricky, interlinking two topics,” said Uday Nath Mishra, chief academic officer, BasicFirst. Of these, 110 were easy and 25 fell under the highly difficult level.
He anticipated the minimum qualifying mark to be 130-140 and 505-515 marks for admission to government colleges.
( With inputs from Karthik Madhavan in Coimbatore)
