NEET-UG Toppers Expected to Drop from 61 to 17 in Revised Merit List

New Delhi, 26th July 2024: The number of NEET-UG toppers is expected to decrease from 61 to 17 when the National Testing Agency (NTA) releases the revised merit list, likely on Friday. This revision comes after IIT-Delhi, following the Supreme Court’s directive, determined that only one option in a particular physics question was correct.

The revision was prompted by student complaints suggesting that two of the four options could be considered correct based on different NCERT books. With the decision to accept only one correct answer, students who had chosen the other option will lose five marks (four for the incorrect answer and one negative mark), significantly affecting their ranks.

This change will impact the scores of approximately 4.2 lakh candidates, including 44 who had achieved perfect scores of 720. These students had previously been awarded marks for the now-deemed incorrect answer. “The number of toppers will drop from 61 to 17 following the mark deduction,” stated an NTA official.

The revision could be crucial for many students, considering that over 24 lakh aspirants took the NEET-UG for the 1.08 lakh medical seats available nationwide. Of these, 56,000 seats are in government institutions, which are highly sought after due to their superior infrastructure and lower fees.

Sources indicate that the most significant impact will be on candidates ranked between 50,000 and 1 lakh. More than 16,000 candidates who were previously likely to secure a seat in a medical college may now fall out of this cohort.

Although the 44 students who will no longer be toppers will still rank within the 33,000 to 50,000 cohort, the change in their ranks could affect their chances of obtaining seats in their preferred government medical colleges.