Medical aspirants find physics questions tougher this year

Chennai: After enduring a tough dress code and frisking before writing National eligibility cum entrance test (Neet), many medical aspirants gave a mixed response to the exam as they found the biology questions relatively easier than chemistry and physics questions. Due to the tough questions and negative marking, many students said they could not finish the physics questions papers. Students also felt the questions had more weightage to class 11 portions compared to last year.

Roshni, who studied in Kendriya Vidyalaya in Avadi said, “Biology questions are easier, but physics had tough and long calculations. I have attempted roughly around 110 questions out of 180 questions”.  She said she did not attend any coaching and prepared for the exam on her own.

Another CBSE student S. Ravi said he hopes to clear the exam after one-year preparation.  Arvind Kumar from the state board said he too found physics portions very tough. “The calculations were lengthy. I attended Neet crash course but it was not enough as more than 50 per cent of the questions were asked from class 11 syllabus,” he said. Pavithra, a first-year engineering student wrote the NEET exam at Asan memorial school in Greams Road. She said overall the question paper was easy compared to last year.

“The overall difficulty level of the paper is moderate. Biology questions were along expected lines as was the case in Chemistry. A majority of the students found the Physics questions a tad difficult as there were some concept based questions,” said Anand Nagarajan, academic head for school division, TIME, Chennai “The cut-off for general category could go up from 131 last year to 150 marks due to the increased awareness and better preparation of students,” he said.

“Over one lakh students appeared for the Neet exam from Tamil Nadu and the number of absentees is less than 5 per cent,” said K. Srinivasan, regional officer, Chennai region, CBSE. No malpractices were reported in the state.

Neet goof-up in Madurai and Salem

The students who are taking NEET exam in two centres in Madurai and Salem had a tough time on Sunday as the CBSE could not give them Tamil question papers in time.

In Madurai, 101 students taking the NEET exam in a centre in Narimedu were taken aback when they received question papers in Hindi. When they raised an alarm, the officials got them the English papers but the exam got delayed by about two hours. The students could start writing the papers only at about noon.

At Vidyamandir School in Salem, 195 students who opted for writing the NEET exam in Tamil were given the question papers only after 1 p.m.  Totally, 780 students were allotted the exam centre. “The English questions were distributed as per schedule. But, they did not have the Tamil question papers and only after three hours they distributed the Tamil question papers.” Meanwhile, the school had served lunch for 195 students.

CBSE's Chennai regional officer K.Srinivasan said, “In Madurai, wrong question papers reached the exam centres. I am not aware of the Salem centre issue. But, wherever there is a delay in starting the exam, we have allotted compensatory time to the students,”

Expert analysis of Neet 2018 question paper

Biology
The number of questions from class XI was comparatively more than that of class XII.  The section had easy, average and difficult level questions. Apart from a few questions, the biology questions were on expected lines.

Chemistry
All questions were concept based and no memory-based question was present. The number of questions covered from class XI and class XII was 25 and 20 respectively. One question from Organic Chemistry had more than one correct option. In organic portion, multi-conceptual questions were asked keeping it little tricky.

Physics
Nearly 80% part of the paper was numerical which is little surprising with respect to Physics. Some questions had long calculations. The number of questions from 11th and 12th part was almost equal - 21 and 24 questions respectively. Some theoretical questions were difficult. As expected, a majority of questions were from rotational motion current electricity, Ray and wave optics.    * Courtesy Akash Institute