With a 99.99 percentile score, two students — Prabanjan J from Tamil Nadu and Bora Varun Chakravarthi from Andhra Pradesh — topped the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET-UG) 2023 for undergraduate admissions, the results of which were declared by the National Testing Agency (NTA) on Tuesday evening.
Pranjal Aggarwal with a fourth all-India rank was announced as the topper among female candidates. Four of the top 10 candidates belong to Tamil Nadu, followed by Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Odisha, and West Bengal.
The exam, which was conducted across the country and in 14 cities abroad on May 7, has been cleared by 56.2% candidates. A total of 11.45 lakh candidates out of 20.38 lakh have cleared the exam with the highest number of those qualifying being from Uttar Pradesh (1.39 lakh), followed by Maharashtra (1.31 lakh), and Rajasthan (over 1 lakh).
According to the NTA, which is the nodal agency to conduct various entrance exams in the country, the NEET-UG exam saw the highest registration of 20,87,462 candidates this year. Of them, 20,38,596, or 97.6% appeared, and a total of 11,45,976, or 56.2% candidates have cleared. The passing percentage is the same as last year.
Of those qualifying for the country’s largest entrance exam for admission to undergraduate MBBS and BDS courses, 6,55,599 are females while 4,90,374 are males, apart from three transgender persons, the NTA said.
Prabanjan and Bora, who share the same rank, have scored perfect 720 marks or 99.9 percentile, and have been declared joint all-India toppers.
Prabanjan J from Tamil Nadu was too busy giving interviews to the media late on Tuesday evening when his uncle, with whom he stays in Chennai, told News18 that they knew he would be among the toppers, but didn’t expect the first all-India rank.
“He has always been a topper in other exams including class XII. It’s just that we didn’t expect him to get the topmost rank. It’s a dream come true. He always wanted to be a doctor and will be the first generation of doctors in his family. Both his parents are government school teachers,” said Nanda Kumar, Prabanjan’s uncle.
He plans to be a surgeon and has All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) as his top choice of medical school, Kumar added.
Tamil Nadu’s Kaustav Bauri, Punjab’s Pranjal Aggrawal, and Karnataka’s Dhruv Advani stood third, fourth, and fifth, respectively. While they too scored 99.99 percentile, the rank has been given using NTA’s “tiebreaker” formula under which, in case of equal marks, the scores in Biology are considered first to decide their rank, followed by Chemistry and Physics.
Of the 11,45,976 qualified candidates, 3,12,405 were from the unreserved category, 5,25,194 from the OBC category, 1,53,674 from SC, 56381 from ST, and 98,322 from the EWS category. Besides, 3,508 candidates from the persons with disabilities category also cleared the exam.
According to NTA, the exam this year saw an increase in qualifying marks. For example, the range of qualifying marks for general category last year was 715-117 marks and it has increased to 720-137 this year. Similarly, for reserved categories — OBC SC, and ST — it has increased from 116-93 to 136-107 this year.
The result of NEET-UG, 2023, has been declared on the basis of the qualifying criteria prescribed by the National Medical Commission and Dental Council of India and also based on the information submitted by the candidates in their online application forms, the NTA said in a statement.
The NEET-UG was conducted across 4,097 centres in 499 cities throughout the country. The examination was also conducted outside India in Abu Dhabi, Bangkok, Colombo, Doha, Kathmandu, Kuala Lumpur, Lagos, Manama, Muscat, Riyadh, Sharjah, and Singapore, along with Dubai and Kuwait City.
The exam was conducted in 13 languages: Assamese, Bengali, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu.
Also, the NTA announced that details and schedule of counselling would be available on the websites of the union ministry of health and family welfare and medical education directorates of states as applicable.
