Even as the NEET controversy raged for over a year in Tamil Nadu, R. Santosh quietly plodded on with his regular CBSE syllabus of NCERT books. And so, when the merit list was released on Wednesday, it came as a little surprise to his parents that their son had ranked first in Tamil Nadu and 226th in the country. Santosh’s score in NEET was 656 of the total 720.
Santosh is already at JIPMER, Puducherry. His parents are both doctors and run a private hospital in Hosur. Incidentally, Santosh also came State second in The Hindu Edge and SMART Learning Centre’s model test.
Mukesh Kanna G.M. of Ponnaiahrajapuram, Coimbatore, secured the State second rank. The declaration of the results did not make a difference to him as he had already got an All-India rank of 260 that enabled him to secure a seat at the Coimbatore Medical College but it did to many of his friends, he said. He also had written the SMART model test.
Kanna, who had completed his higher secondary in 2015 in State Board, did not get a medical seat that year. He studied engineering for a year before dropping out to prepare for NEET. After attempting the exam, he realised that State Board students had to have a different approach — understand what they study and apply it to solve the problems.
The State’s third rank was secured by Syed Hafiz of Tiruchi. With a NEET score of 651, he has already secured admission at Madras Medical College based on the All-India Ranking. After completing his higher secondary in State Board last year, Syed spent a year for preparation.
State fourth topper Aishwarya Srinivasan of Chennai, too had written the model test, said Archana Ram, managing director, SMART Training Resources. “Close to 5,000 students from across the State had taken the model test. The students were also given an online test series, study material and all the toppers were offered free coaching,” she said.
(With inputs by P.V. Srividya, Karthik Madhavan and R. Krishnamoorthy)
Published - August 24, 2017 12:53 am IST
