NEET-II gives medical aspirants cause for cheer

The second phase of the National Eligibility and Entrance Test (NEET) held on Sunday turned out to be a cakewalk for candidates as most of them found it to be much easier than anticipated. Candidates aspiring for admission to medical and dental courses said that compared to NEET-I and MH-CET, which were held in May, NEET-II was a cinch.

According to aspiring candidates, the test was not as difficult as the NEET-I paper as they had studied from the study manuals provided by the state CET cell. “Unlike the NEET-I paper which was based more on the AIPMT format, the NEET-II paper was more on the lines of the MH-CET and, hence, it was not difficult to crack,” said Romit Jhakaria, one of the aspirants. He said he hoped to secure a good score and thus get admission in one of the private medical colleges.

As per the order of the Supreme Court, while states could conduct admissions to state-run medical and dental colleges based on the CET scores, admissions to private colleges had to be conducted through NEET only. With only 2,800 government seats on offer, aspirants not wanting to lose out on a chance to secure a seat in a private college had to appear for NEET-II.

While analysing the difficulty level among the physics, chemistry and biology papers, aspirants said that the physics section was tougher as more questions were based on the class 12 syllabus than that of class 11. Aspirants claimed that the calculations in the physics questions were the major hurdle. However, the questions for the chemistry and biology sections were more balanced and, hence, they concentrated more on those questions. The paper was of 180 marks and was held over a period of three hours.

Meanwhile, the state government has issued notifications regarding changes to be effected in the entrance test format and adopting NEET for all future admissions to medical and dental courses. However, admissions to all other healthcare courses such as homeopathy, ayurveda, paramedics and nursing, among others, will be conducted through the MH-CET that will continue to be conducted by the state CET cell. In all, around 4.7 lakh students appeared for NEET-II.