Most students say NEET-I caught them off-guard

Many students walking out of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET-I) centres in Bengaluru on Sunday said the physics section was relatively tough.

Sushmitha V, a student from MES College said she was completely dependent on CET and was under tremendous stress when she was asked to take this exam.

 “I had prepared for CET. Not this one. Physics was complicated,” she said.

Meanwhile, Shivani Patil, a student from SVR College in Kalaburagi said, “We had only around 15 days to prepare. The number of days we got to prepare for competitive exams were cut short due to repeated chemistry paper leaks. There has been one stress after another,” she said. Rahil, another student, said, “We would have definitely done better if there was no paper leak.”

Preparing for NEET is different compared to the other exams and hence it was difficult, said a few students. “The pattern is different for both. This will have more questions out of the syllabus and mostly from NCERT,” said Karthik C, student, Excellent PU College.

As many as 6.5 lakh students wrote the Phase I paper for 720 marks. While there were 90 questions from biology, there were 45 each from chemistry and physics.  Students were also angry about the exam being conducted in phases. Students who had registered for the All-India Pre-Medical and Pre-Dental Test (AIPMT) wrote the first phase of the exam on Sunday.

The second phase of NEET is scheduled for July 24 and is only for candidates who had not registered for AIPMT.

Nisha Tripathi, a student of KV, DRDO said she had no plans for preparing for NEET. “I was completely dependent on other competitive exams and this came in between that,” she added.

Sadhan, a student from Bijapur said this was not fair to students. “First of all, giving them additional time to prepare is wrong. Besides that, they will be given different papers. How fair is it? Will it be ensured that the same difficulty level is maintained?” he questioned.

  A group of around 70 parents said they would submit a memorandum to the chief minister urging the government to push for another round of exams for students who appeared for the exam on Sunday.

“There was not enough time for our children to prepare. We will seek a concession that they be given another opportunity,” said one of the parents at an exam centre in Mariyannapalya.