JOIN USHet Shah of Gujarat has topped the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) as the combined results were declared by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) on Tuesday.
The second spot was grabbed by Ekansh Goyal from Odisha and the third by Nikhil Bajiya of Rajasthan. Shah secured 685 of the total 720 marks, followed by Goyal with 682 and Bajiya 678.
After the Supreme Court ruled for holding a single entrance test for admissions to medical and dental colleges, the CBSE held NEET in two phases. While NEET-I was held at 1,040 centres in 52 cities on May 1, NEET-II was held at 739 centres in 56 cities on July 24. Close to 6 lakh candidates appeared in NEET-I and 4.75 lakh candidates registered for NEET-II, with the board claiming that 90% appeared for the second edition.
The results, along with the statistics released by the CBSE, indicated that a little over 7.31 lakh took the test.
This has happened because almost half of the candidates who registered for NEET-II appeared in NEET-I. They applied for taking the second edition of the test hoping to improve their scores.
“The list of candidates who registered for the test and appeared has been created ticking out from NEET-I list those who took NEET-II,” a CBSE official said.
Though boys grabbed the top ranks, overall girls have outperformed boys. Of the about 4.09 lakh candidates who qualified from across the country, more than 2.26 lakh were girls. Of the total 8,02,594 students who registered for the two tests, 19,325 students were declared qualified for admissions to medical colleges under the 15% all-India quota. Of this 11,058 were boys.
CBSE spokesperson Rama Sharma said: “NEET 2016 result will also be available on ‘Digilocker’ website at http://results.digilocker.gov.in. This an a CBSE initiative in collaboration with DigiLocker. This is a mobile friendly website.” DigiLocker is a virtual space created for safe storage, verification and retrieval of important documents like marks sheets and degree certificates.