Kolkata: The solution of cancelling the grace marks to 1,563 students who wrote this year’s murky NEET-UG exams was a “bait” that students were expected to take and does not address the problem at all, says Maheshwer Peri.
Peri is the founder of Careers 360 and has been vocal on X in taking apart the many things wrong with how the National Testing Agency conducted the exam this year. To The Wire, Peri says that this year’s NEET-UG is a “rigged” examination. Almost 24 lakh students wrote the exam this time for places in government colleges that teach them to become doctors.
A day ago, on June 13, the Union government told the Supreme Court that the students who got the grace marks will be notified of their scores without them and given the option to appear for a re-test. Those who do not wish to sit for re-tests will have their original scores – without the grace marks – considered.
The matter of grace marks came up only after the results were declared on June 4, the same day that the counting of votes for the Lok Sabha elections and multiple assembly elections was taking place. Experts and students have pointed to how the original results date of June 14 was brought forward to a day when attention would ostensibly be elsewhere.
NEET mess ‘blamed’ on grace marks! #NeetScams #NTA pic.twitter.com/67qlwKbs2C
— Satish Acharya (@satishacharya) June 14, 2024
Soon after the score cards went live, students pointed to the statistical impossibility of some of them having got numbers like 719 and 718. This is impossible, they said. The score for each question is 4. A wrong answer gets you a negative mark of 1. So, those who can answer all 180 questions correctly get 720. Those who answer 179 questions correctly get 716. There cannot be a number between these two.
Faced with this question, the NTA said – for the first time after the announcement of the results – that it awarded grace marks based on “few representations and court cases by candidates” who had lost time during the test. It claimed that to grant the grace marks, it used a normalisation formula cleared by the apex court in 2018. But it did not say that this formula was devised for the CLAT examination which happens online, making it easier to track time lost.
— National Testing Agency (@NTA_Exams) June 4, 2024
The NTA claimed that this was how the scores could be 718 or 719.
While the award of grace marks was one of the issues with this year’s tests, it is not the only one – or, as Peri says, the most important one.
“The PIL for the 1,563 students brought the entire problem down to a single matter. The integrity of the examination is lost – the Supreme Court itself had said that the “sanctity of the exams” is under question. This is a small thing and the issue was reduced to this,” Peri says.
He adds that what the NTA provided as a “solution” was always on the table. It was mulling a re-test at the June 8 press conference itself. Dr Jyothi R, the Indian Medical Association Junior Doctor’s Network, had on that very day asked The Wire as to what would happen if there is no uniformity in the question paper for the same examination.
A bigger problem is something Peri and other experts have referred to repeatedly – the inscrutable inflation of scores. There are 67 toppers who scored full marks – 720. With the cancellation of grace marks, the number is down to 61. Peri has pointed out that this will be the first time that a topper will not get their choice of institution – AIIMS Delhi, the first choice, admits only 56. With 61 toppers, some will clearly not be taken. Here too, the NTA’s solution is strange. If their marks in various categories are similar, then the NTA has espoused a system where those who have registered for the exam first will get primacy.
Peri is worried about what students who have respectable scores – but lower ranks – will do. The chart below, taken from one of his videos, illustrates the extraordinary hike in students occupying a score bracket which in earlier years was available to a few. Students’ forums across Reddit and social media are rife with candidates who have recorded their scores in the upper 600s but have ranks that are significantly lower.
Students, candidates, parents and reporters have repeatedly pointed out how it is drilled into them that a score of 650 is a respectable one – capable of getting them places in government colleges. However, this time, such unwritten rules have fallen by the wayside.
Photo and numbers: Careers 360.
Such students are left in the lurch, says Peri. And what they will do come counselling day – July 6 – is something Peri says he doesn’t have the answer to.
The Wire has reached NTA for a comment on this. This piece will be updated if we receive a response.
“The only way to get to the bottom of it is through a technical and forensic audit. You have for the first time a topper who has reportedly failed their Class 12 exam. You have several toppers from the same centre. The NTA should identify the lapses. Look at whether students who are based, say, at Hyderabad or New Delhi, are preferring centres at Godhra or elsewhere – this shows that an agent asked you to book a slot at an amenable place,” he says.
Statistical modelling, adds Peri, can help identify the sources of the massive variance between some students’ Class 10 and 12 performances and their NEET scores.
Many have urged the NTA to address the paper leak – it is one of the many issues which are still being heard by the Supreme Court, although with a complete re-test ruled out, the solutions are few. The returning Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan has claimed there are no paper leaks. However, there were complaints of the paper becoming available on social media and use of unfair means, and reports of Rs 60 crore being exchanged for it.
There are also allegations that while one coaching centre is a petitioner in the Supreme Court, others have been conspicuously silent. Such centres wield significant influence and run consistent advertisements of ‘success’ rates.
When asked if the opacity of such exams is to blame, Peri says this is a larger question. “The system is always unfair to those who have no coaching. The girl child who cannot go to a coaching centre because her parents won’t allow it,” he says.