Rajasthan boy tops NEET with 701/720 score

NEW DELHI: Nalin Khandelwal of Rajasthan has topped this year’s National Eligibilitycum Entrance Test (NEET) for admission to undergraduate medical courses, scoring 701 out of 720 marks in the examination in which over 14 lakh candidates appeared across the country. Madhuri G Reddy from Telangana topped among girls and secured the all India rank of seven with a score of 695.
Delhi’s Bhavik Bansal and Akshat Kaushik from Uttar Pradesh secured the second and third positions respectively.Both scored 700, but Bansal was ranked second because he secured more marks in biology than Kaushik.
This year nearly 5,000 candidates with disabilities appeared for the test with Sabhyata Singh Kushwaha of Uttar Pradesh topping among them with a score of 610 marks and all India rank of 5,739. In the test, conducted for the first time by National Testing Agency, close to 8 lakh candidates qualified (scoring 50 percentile or more). The highlight of this year’s NEET, which has been facing opposition from states like Tamil Nadu, has been conducted without controversy and witnessed an improvement in overall marks range as compared to 2018.
A total of 14,10,755 candidates appeared for the test of which 2,86,245 were from unreserved category. In all, 7,97,042 candidates qualified for around 60,000 MBBS/BDS seats in various government and private-run institutions across the country. A total of 4,45,761girls qualified, nearly a lakh more than male candidates (3,51,278).
Hailing from a family of doctors, Khandelwal from Sikar (Rajasthan) said he would wait for the results of AIIMS entrance test before taking a call on the choice of institution. “AIIMS Delhi is definitely my first choice and I am waiting for the results,” he said adding NEET was “easy this time”. “Focus on NCERT books, multiple reading of study materials and seven to hours of self-study,” advised Khandelwal who scored 95.8% in his Class XII board exams.