NEET: Raj, Maharashtra boards & CBSE dominate list of high performers

NEW DELHI: The two school education boards of Rajasthan and Maharashtra combined with CBSE to produce the cream of the crop in this year’s NEET-UG, hogging 67.4% of the merit list comprising candidates with scores of 600 and above out of 720. CBSE maintained its pre-eminence by accounting for 55.3% of those who scored 650 and above even as the number of high performers in the 700 and above band dropped to a three-year low.
Of the 20,901 candidates who scored 600 and above, 70% were from eight states, led by Rajasthan and UP in second spot. In the 400 and above range, more than one-third of the 1,79,231 candidates were from UP, Rajasthan and Maharashtra.
According to data accessed by TOI, CBSE contributed 2,591 of the 4,681 candidates who scored 650 and above. In this range, Rajasthan’s performance was a distant second with 8.1% while Maharashtra clocked 5.6%.

Conversely, CBSE’s percentage in the range of 600 and above fell to 50.4%, while Rajasthan’s share rose to 11.4%. Five boards – CBSE, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Gujarat – produced 73.6% of the candidates who scored 600 and above.
For both CBSE and the Rajasthan board, the percentage of candidates in the 400 and above band fell significantly, while that of Maharashtra and some other state boards increased.
Overall, the data doesn’t suggest that CBSE institutions have a better success rate given the fact that the number of candidates from the central board appearing for the test was more than four lakh, double the number of aspirants from Maharashtra, second in the pecking order.
Other state boards with over one lakh candidates were UP, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, with each clocking a qualification rate exceeding 50%. While CBSE (70%) had the highest qualification percentage in respect of the number of candidates who wrote the test, the CISCE, AP and Telangana boards also had a qualification strike rate of 60%.
A total of 99 candidates scored 700 and above, down from 203 in 2021 and 111 in 2020. The number of candidates scoring 600 and above, however, increased from 19,135 in 2021 to 21,163 in 2022. The club of 500 and above dropped from 85,022 last year to 84,236, marking the second consecutive dip from 87,093 in 2020.
The total number of candidates scoring 450 and above decreased to 1.2 lakh from 1.3 last year. The four-year NEET-UG score data shows that around 63% candidates in the range of 450 and above were from just eight states – Delhi, Rajasthan, UP, Maharashtra, Kerala, Bengal and TN. These score ranges form the key cohort for counselling and allocation of seats.
In the 400 and above band, nearly 90% of the 1.79 lakh candidates were from 15 states, while seven – Kerala, Karnataka, Bihar, Bengal, Maharashtra, UP and Rajasthan – accounted for 58.3%.
Around 83,000 MBBS and 40,000 BDS seats are up for grabs this year. Government-run institutions, including AIIMS Delhi and JIPMER, have around 43,000 seats.