NEET Results 2018: Three from Telangana and Andhra Pradesh make it to top 10; Tamil Nadu sees low qualifying rate

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) announced the result for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET ) 2018 on Monday. While Kalpana Kumari from Bihar bagged the All India Rank 1 with 99.99 percentile, other ranks within top ten — second, sixth and eighth — have been secured by students from the southern states Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. Rohan Purohit from Hyderabad secured the all India second rank with the score of 690 marks out of 720. Purohit, who aspires to be a neurosurgeon, wants to pursue his education from All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi.  “I am very much inspired by my father who is a senior cardiologist. I began preparing for all these competitive exams from Class 8. I like biology but in NEET, I scored more marks in chemistry,” he was quoted as saying by  Deccan Chronicle. While Varun Muppidi from Hyderabad came sixth in the all India rankings, Ankadala Anirudh Babu from Andhra Pradesh bagged the eighth rank. Muppidi also aims to be a neurosurgeon. [caption id=“attachment_4496685” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image. PTI[/caption] Babu credited his success to the competitiveness his group of friends practiced. “We are a group of four and we used to always compete with each other. I am happy that all of us could secure a spot in top 50 ranks in the open category,”  The Times of India quoted him as saying. A total of five candidates from the Andhra Pradesh have featured in the top 50 list,  The New Indian Express reported. There are 11 ranks from the state between between 50 and 100. In 2017, just 10 students from the state had made it to the top 100 list. According to The Hindu, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, and Kerala are among the states which have a high percentage of candidates qualifying the NEET 2018. In contrast, Tamil Nadu did not fare well, as only close to 39.6 percent of the candidates who appeared for the exam were able to qualify in the exam. A total of 13.36 lakh candidates had registered for the exam, a 16.49-per cent increase from last year. However, 12.69 lakh candidates appeared for the test, of whom 7.14 lakh cleared it. As many as 76,778 candidates from Uttar Pradesh cleared the test. Over 72,000 and 70,000 candidates cleared the test from Kerala and Maharashtra respectively. The CBSE had conducted the test on 6 May in 136 cities in 11 languages. The results have been put up on the official websites of the board,  cbseneet.nic.in and cbseresults.nic.in. The NEET for admission to MBBS and BDS courses in colleges run with the approval of the Medical Council of India and the Dental Council of India. The test is not for admissions to institutions established through an Act of Parliament such as the AIIMS and the Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER) in Puducherry. With inputs from PTI