According to the most recent NEET UG 2024 results, 67 students received an All India Rank (AIR) of 1. Although experts and students are concerned about how this may affect admissions and the cutoff, NTA clarified that this is the result of a change in NCERT books.
There was an atoms question on the NEET UG 2024 Chemistry exam.
Pupils were required to select one response from the four options that indicated which of the two statements (provided in the question) was true.
The issue arose when NTA noticed that two of the options provided were marked correctly by NCERT in both their old and new books, after their provisional answers to the main objections.
As per the old NCERT book, the correct option was ‘Atoms of each element are stable’. However, the new NCERT books states that ‘atoms of most of the elements are stable’.
Keeping this in mind, “NTA had to assign 5 marks to all students who had marked either of the options. Due to this, marks of a total of 44 students’ increased from 715 to 720, which resulted in an increased number of toppers,” a senior NTA official told.
When asked if this was the sole reason behind a record number of NEET UG toppers this year, NTA clarified that while this played a major role, the “fact that the paper was comparatively easier this year and there was a huge increase in the number of registrations also played important roles in the increased number of toppers”.
Compared to last year’s 20.87 lakh registrations, a record 23.81 lakh students registered for NEET UG this year. Ninety-six,393 male candidates, 13,31,321 female candidates, and 17 transgender candidates took the exam, according to the figures provided by NTA.
The percentage of candidates who attended was 96.94 percent overall, 96.92 percent for male candidates, 96.96 percent for female candidates, and 94.44 percent for transgender candidates.
NTA has, however, also denied the assertions of students that this may negatively impact the prospects available to students in the general category. “General students still have as many seats as they had earlier, and so do all other categories. The exam was also comparatively easier, so nobody will suffer,” the NTA official added.
