Nagpur: There were a few reasons for Nagpurians to be proud, as four local students scored 100 percentile in the MHT-CET exams. Since their scores and names were made public by the exam conducting body, there was no ambiguity in the results.
In the physics-chemistry-math (PCM) group of MHT-CET, Nagpur’s Prasad Kukde bagged the perfect 100 percentile. Neighbouring Wardha’s Bhushan Kohpare was the only other Vidarbha student on the PCM list of 100 percentile scorers.
In the physics-chemistry-biology (PCB) group of MHT-CET, Vidarbha students had a field day. Nagpur’s Janhavi Chafle, Smit Walke and Arya Chati scored 100 percentile. Same score was bagged by Chandrapur’s Vaideshi Loya, and Amravati’s Keyur Deshmukh and Omesh Nichat.
TOI spoke to a couple of these high scorers and they said the results were along expected lines. Janhavi Chafle said, “After attending classes I devoted 8 to 10 hours a day for self-study. The lockdown period was beneficial for me as I could focus on studies for maximum hours.”
Chafle added, “I solved practice papers and made a note of mistakes that were made so that I could rectify them later, while revising. I have taken admission in AIIMS Nagpur for my undergraduate studies.”
She said the exam was of ‘medium’ difficulty level. “I felt chemistry was easy, biology was comparatively difficult whereas physics was of medium difficulty.”
Prasad Kukde said preparation for JEE Advanced helped him a lot in MHT-CET. “The exam wasn’t a big task for me as I had already prepared a lot for JEE Advanced. It helped me solve the CET paper and I was able to score well. The paper was balanced with tough and easy questions and Maths was the easiest section for me.”
He has already confirmed his seat at IIT Bhubaneswar in the computer science (CS) stream. “My AIR in JEE Advanced was 2,038 and there is a lot of scope in the CS field due to progress and demand for technology,” said Kukde.
While the percentile system is used in other exams like JEE too, academic Panini Telang is not a fan. “In percentile system your performance is tied to the topper of your group, which is the group that gets the same set of question paper. Then the normalization of scores happens, which I find very amusing,” Telang said.
“You can normalize statistics but here you are applying the same formula on intelligence, and that’s faulty,” he added.
MHT-CET is for students seeking admission to undergraduate courses in engineering and non-MBBS, dentistry or medical-related streams (ayurveda, pharmacy etc).
AT A GLANCE
Students appeared
PCM: 1,74,679
PCB: 2,11,925
Gender wise for both streams
Male: 2,22,563
Female: 1,64,021
Transgender: 20
Exam centres
In Maharashtra: 187
Rest of India: 10
Exam pattern
Mode: Online only
Days: 16
Sessions: 32
Number of 100 percentile scorers
PCM: 22
PCB: 19