Chandigarh: Stunning 99.4% in commerce puts Shreya in the lead in tricity
As the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) released the Class 12 result on Tuesday, based on the data compiled by schools and shared with HT by evening, Shreya Garg of KBDAV Senior Secondary Public School, Sector 7, Chandigarh, emerged as the leader across the four streams, with a sparkling score of 99.4%.
A resident of Sector 9, Panchkula, Shreya aspires to become a chartered accountant.
Possessing an innate aptitude for commerce, she landed a perfect 100 in business studies and accountancy.
She had switched from Saupin's School, Panchkula, which is an ICSE board school, to CBSE in Class 11: 'Contrary to what many say, I found the CBSE pattern tougher than ICSE. It was all about consistency for me — I gave around six hours a day to my studies.'
Her father, Devraj Garg, runs a crockery store and her mother, Renu Garg, is a homemaker.
Akshita Jain of Bhavan Vidyalaya, Sector 15, Panchkula, shone in the non-medical stream, scoring an outstanding 99.2%. A resident of Sector 15, Panchkula, she has her sights set on pursuing BTech from IIT Bombay. She is currently preparing for the JEE Advanced, scheduled for May 18.
Her mother, Shravika Jain, who works with HSVP, Panchkula, said Akshita studied up to seven hours daily. Her father, Vishal Jain, is an officer with an insurance company.
Bringing laurels for Chandigarh, Aarav Goel of Sri Guru Harkrishan Model School, Sector 38, achieved a brilliant 99% in medical.
For Aarav, careers in medicine run in the family. His father, Dr Rajeev Goel, is a neurosurgeon at Fortis, Mohali, and Dr Pragya Goel is a gynaecologist.
His elder brother, Pranshu, is also pursuing MBBS from Government Medical College and Hospital, Sector 32. 'Having several doctors in the family was certainly a big help,' said Aarav, who hopes to specialise in radiology after studying from AIIMS, New Delhi. He appeared for the NEET-UG exam held recently, and is excited for the result.
In humanities, Charmi of St Joseph's Senior Secondary School, Sector 44, achieved a remarkable 98.8%.
Having scored 100% in psychology, she desires to cement a successful career in criminology.
'Crime-related TV shows and films always fascinated me and inspired my interest in criminology,' she said. A resident of Kurali, Charmi is also fond of sketching as a hobby.
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Scroll.in
8 hours ago
- Scroll.in
Why the National Testing Agency continues to fail students in India
It was Saipriya S's second time taking the National Eligibility Entrance Test, the entrance exam for undergraduate medical programmes, conducted by the National Testing Agency. She began studying for it while in school, and wrote the exam first in 2024. Then, on May 4, 2025, Saipriya, who is from Chennai, attempted the exam for the second time after taking a gap year to focus on preparing for it, a common strategy among candidates. The venue was a Kendriya Vidyalaya government school in the city. Like most candidates, Saipriya was nervous before the exam – but she was confident about performing well. The paper was handed to her exactly at 2 pm. At first glance, it looked long and difficult, but the first hour went off smoothly, and Saipriya settled in. Then, in the middle of the exam, invigilators began the process of verifying the identities of students, which cut into their precious writing time, Saipriya recounted. The first time she wrote the exam, she said, students were given an optical mark reader, or OMR, sheet, with details such as their names and roll numbers filled in. They had to confirm that the information was accurate. But this time, they were given two such sheets and had to fill in the information themselves in the middle of the exam, as well as register a fingerprint. 'They took so long and it caused a lot of disturbance,' she said. From there, the situation went downhill. A little after an hour, there was a power outage in the exam hall. 'Around the same time, it also became really cloudy and dark outside because of the rains,' Saipriya said. 'I couldn't even read the question paper.' Saipriya tried to read the questions by holding the paper up close to her eyes. 'We have a minute to answer each question,' she said. 'These questions were very long, and because it was so dark, I took longer.' For about 20 minutes in between, Saipriya recounted, the electricity returned – but when she saw the paper more clearly, she realised that she had missed many questions. 'I began to panic and started crying, but I knew I just had to keep pushing until the end,' she said. A similar scene played out in a testing centre in Indore, where Devesh Tripati was writing the same exam. As heavy rains lashed the city, 'Rainwater was coming in through the windows and his paper got wet,' said SS Tripati, Devesh's father. This centre also saw a power outage, for one-and-a-half hours, which hampered Devesh's ability to read questions properly. 'The collector said the next day that the NTA had not prescribed guidelines that advised on what centres have to do if the power goes off,' the father said. 'These are big shortcomings on the part of the administration. How can they not have a generator?' Criticisms, failures Last year, the NTA had faced a storm of criticism over its functioning after several exams, most prominently NEET, saw a range of irregularities, from paper leaks and errors in question papers and answer keys, and apparent discrepancies in final scores. Students and parents from across the country petitioned the Supreme Court over these problems, demanding measures such as retests and investigations into malpractices. The court directed the NTA to formulate reforms to improve its functioning. In June 2024, the ministry of education constituted a seven-member committee which recommended a range of reforms, many of which have been implemented by the NTA. Despite this, a year later, the agency's conduct of exams has fallen short. For instance, after the Joint Entrance Exam Main, for admission to undergraduate engineering programmes, was held in April, factual errors were discovered in some questions, which were then dropped. Meanwhile, some students claimed their answers were recorded incorrectly in their response sheet, which they can access online after the exam, while others reported facing other technical glitches. Takers of the Common University Entrance Test, for admission to various central government universities, also faced hurdles. The exams were initially supposed to begin on May 8, but on May 7, the NTA announced that it was not prepared to conduct them, and that it would do so between May 13 and June 3 instead. Other problems followed. After the CUET exams for accountancy were held in mid-May, the NTA offered retests to students because it had included questions in the paper that were not part of the prescribed syllabus. Retests were also announced for the Tamil and Urdu papers, held later in the month. Further, on May 27, media reported that the first shift of CUET tests was delayed in several centres across the country due to technical glitches in the servers. Many educationists argue the continuing failures of NTA point to larger questions surrounding its very nature and structure – questions that they say the committee set up last year failed to address. Misguided reforms The committee was led by Dr K Radhakrishnan, the former chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation, and included academics from the All India Institute of Medical Science, Delhi, the University of Hyderabad, and the Indian Institutes of Technology in Delhi and Kanpur. In October 2024, the committee submitted its recommendations to the ministry of education. Among these were that the NTA conduct only entrance exams and not recruitment exams, such as those for jobs in bodies like the National Highway Authority of India and the Employees Provident Fund Organisation. The committee also recommended that security for exams be improved, that 'mobile testing centres' be created for students in remote areas and that it set up grievance redressal cells. Some of the recommendations made by the committee were to be implemented for the exams conducted in 2025, while others were to be implemented over a longer period. Faculty across the country argued that these recommendations were riddled with problems – while some were misguided, others were insufficient. 'The reforms are more a knee-jerk reaction to the NTA controversies and court case and nothing more,' said Prince Gajendra Babu, an education activist from Tamil Nadu. 'The recommendations seem extremely superficial.' Scroll emailed queries to the NTA about its failures and criticisms of its functioning. This story will be updated if the agency responds. Many criticisms of the NTA, as well as the committee's report, pertained to the very nature of the agency. Among these is that the NTA is not fully a government body, rather a society registered under the Societies Registration Act of 1896. And while other bodies that play a crucial role in education, such as the Central Board of Secondary Education, which formerly conducted the NEET exam, are also societies, educationists noted that these bodies operate with a significantly higher degree of transparency. For instance, after the 2024 leaks, educationists expressed concerns that the NTA had not published its memorandum of association on its website, as the CBSE had. They argued that doing this would be crucial to informing the public about how the agency was established and how it functions. As of this story's publication, the agency had still not published the document on its website. For its part, the expert committee suggested only that the government 'consider continuing NTA as a Society or re-define it as a Statutory Body (under the Union Ministry of Education) in due course'. Maya John, a member of the Delhi University Academic Council and a faculty member of Delhi's Jesus and Mary College, argued that the recommendation needed to be far clearer and more decisive. 'The committee's recommendations call for restructuring the setup of the National Testing Agency,' she said. 'However, in the very first recommendation, it leaves to the government the decision regarding operating the NTA as a society or making it a statutory body.' Babu said that it was particularly worrying that the NTA outsourced some of its work, such as setting up exam centres, managing security and capturing biometric data. 'They are an autonomous body that continues to outsource all their work,' he said. 'So there is no way that the NTA is an academic body. I don't see the report delving into the question of why a non-academic body has been given the responsibility of conducting such large-scale exams.' Earlier, students had more access to personnel in charge of conducting the examinations, explained Dr Amalorpavanathan, a retired surgeon from the Madras Medical College. 'In Tamil Nadu, you could just go to the office and get assistance,' he said. Now, however, the work had been centralised and they 'have to rely on some nameless office in Delhi', he added. Question papers Another crucial aspect that experts argued the NTA had faltered on, and which the committee had not sufficiently addressed, was the setting of question papers. In numerous exams in 2024, such as JEE and NEET-UG, question papers were found to contain a variety of errors or flaws – for instance, some papers contained questions outside the designated syllabus. In one prominent instance, a paper had two correct answers, resulting in confusion among students. 'In the 2024 NEET-UG exam, students suffered because one of the physics questions had two different answers,' Babu explained. One of these was listed in an old textbook and another in a newer one. After students and academics pointed out that both answers were technically accurate, the NTA announced that students would be granted marks if they provided either answer. But K Ravi Kumar, a physics professor from Tamil Nadu, explained that many students lost time in the confusion, and that many left the question unanswered because of it. When the Supreme Court demanded that the NTA explain how this situation had arisen, Kumar said that the agency merely blamed the National Council of Educational Research and Training, which had published different versions of a textbook that contained the question, with both answers. 'The NTA is an independent body, it has no connection to NCERT, so if there is a mistake that was made, the NTA must hold itself accountable for it,' Kumar said. 'Are they just copy-pasting the questions? If they have a team that is given the responsibility of setting these questions on their own, why are they reliant on a textbook?' Critics explained that they had hoped that the committee would frame recommendations that would address this problem, and prevent it from recurring. Instead, the committee's recommendations were superficial, they argued. 'The committee recommends that NTA must have a 'secure and trusted question bank',' said Kumar. Such a recommendation was too vague to serve any purpose, he noted. 'Firstly, I'm not sure what having a question bank means. And second, did they not have a secure and trusted source for their questions before? That's extremely concerning.' Babu explained that the report also had a vaguely phrased recommendation about the kind of resources that should be used to set question papers, which was likely to cause immense stress to students. Specifically, the report states that the 'NTA should create an extensive resource library catering to each subject area covering the textbooks and reference books by different authors.' Further, it noted that while these resources could include prescribed school and university textbooks, 'they are not limited to these alone'. Such an approach would be entirely unsuitable to young people who have just completed school and have limited exposure to subjects and resources, he argued. 'The method that the report recommends for preparing question papers may be best suited for post PhD appointments or civil service exams, but definitely not applicable for higher secondary students,' he said. He added that 'evaluation can be only to assess the knowledge gained from the prescribed syllabus. One cannot go beyond the prescribed syllabus and expect the candidate to know the full depth of the subject at the higher secondary level.' Experts said they were also worried by the committee's apparent inclination towards a greater centralisation of the tests. In its report, the committee stated that the agency should draw insights specific to India from some large-scale examinations, such as those for admission to the IITs and IIMs. But as Maya John pointed out, while these intensely competitive exams are based on their own syllabus and have their own formats, the NTA in fact needed to be more cognisant of a wider range of students who write some of its exams. For instance, the CUET exams determine admissions for a range of universities – John argued that for such an exam, the agency should ensure that paper-setters take into account 'the differences in secondary education boards across the country' so as not to exclude any students. Further, N Sukumar, a professor from Delhi University, said he was apprehensive of a suggestion by the committee that test administrators print question papers at the test centres, as a way to prevent papers from leaking. 'It seems unlikely that all the test centres will have printing machines,' he said. 'And how do we know it's safe to print at these centres?' Governance and functioning Some recommendations that the committee made were implemented by the NTA. For instance, the committee noted that since its inception in 2018, the NTA had conducted 244 exams, including those for jobs in the Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya schools and the National Horticulture Board. It stated that the agency was 'overstretched', a concern that many academics echoed. 'NTA should primarily conduct entrance examinations,' the report said. 'Enhancing its scope for other examinations may be considered after the capacity of NTA is augmented.' Following through with the recommendations, the education minister Dharmendra Pradhan announced in December 2024 that the NTA would only conduct entrance examinations. But other recommendations remain unfulfilled, educationists noted, including those pertaining to the agency's governance. For instance, the report recommended that the NTA appoint two additional director generals to oversee key functions – however, as of publication, the NTA website only names the chairperson and the director general, while others in the governing body are merely referred to as members. The report also recommended that the NTA work in tandem with other agencies, such as the UGC, as 'knowledge partners'. But they specify that the NTA and the other agency 'should clearly define their roles and responsibilities through an MoU and set up an Advisory Body'. No documentation pertaining to such arrangements is available on the website. Legal challenges This year as well, the NTA faces a slew of legal challenges over the conduct of the NEET exam. In Chennai, Saipriya and Akhtar, along with 11 other students, approached the Madras High Court seeking a stay on the NEET results. On May 18, the court directed the NTA to temporarily hold back the results. Students in Madhya Pradesh also approached the high court seeking a stay on their results after many exam centres faced power cuts. Here too, the court put a temporary stay on the results of students from 11 centres in the state. On June 6, however, the Madras High Court dismissed the petitions, in effect allowing the agency to proceed with the release of the results. In Madhya Pradesh, the high court ordered on June 9 that results for 75 petitioning students be held back – as of publication, it was unclear whether the court would order that a retest be held for the candidates. Parents, meanwhile, fear their children will face lifelong consequences as a result of the agency's inefficiencies. 'Even the chief minister has several ministers under him because he cannot take on all the jobs. Then why does the NTA think that they can conduct every exam?' said A Yousaf Ali, a parent, whose son wrote the NEET exam at the same centre as Saipriya did. 'Why is the government giving the NTA responsibility for all the exams? That's why they are unable to conduct any of them properly.'
Time of India
11 hours ago
- Time of India
List MBBS students or they will face practise bar: NMC to colleges
NEW DELHI: Cracking the whip, the National Medical Commission (NMC) has said that students who got admission in MBBS course in 2024-25 but whose names are missing from its portal may not be eligible for registration to practise medicine. The National Medical Commission - the apex body for regulating medical education in the country - issued the warning through a public notice after failing to receive the names and basic details of all students admitted to MBBS course in 2024-25 in medical colleges across the country. India has approximately 1.18 lakh MBBS seats. According to NMC, despite issuance of several circulars and public notices over the last eight months, details of only 1,15,250 students admitted for 2024-25 academic year have been received from medical colleges and uploaded on its portal. "Some of the colleges did not upload details of students admitted to MBBS course and some colleges uploaded incomplete data," it said. In the public notice, a copy of which is with TOI, NMC stated that only students whose details have been uploaded on the portal shall be eligible for registration to practise medicine. It has directed students whose names are missing to consult the directorate of medical education concerned or their counselling authority urgently. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Eat 1 Teaspoon Every Night, See What Happens A Week Later [Video] getfittoday Undo The first deadline for submission of details - which include name of medical college, date of admission, student name, their merit number, date of birth and roll number - was Nov 8, 2024. Later, it was extended to Nov 23 and then to Dec 10. Sources said NMC's decision in Oct last year to seek details of all students admitted to MBBS course was prompted by an informal exercise it carried out to double-check that colleges made such admissions in accordance with regulations. The apex body found at least 30-40 instances where students were admitted in breach of rules. For example, a senior official said, even students who obtained less than 50% marks in 10+2 (physics, chemistry, biology) -- a basic criterion -- were granted admission. A senior NMC official highlighted that while granting admission, medical colleges are required to ensure the numbers are not beyond their sanctioned intake capacity. Also, colleges must make sure that students meet eligibility requirements regarding age and qualifying marks. All students admitted to MBBS course are supposed to have cleared NEET-UG with the required percentile: 50th percentile and above for general category, 45th percentile and above for the physically challenged and 40th percentile and above for reserved (SC/ST/OBC) candidates.
Indian Express
a day ago
- Indian Express
NEET UG Results 2025: These are top MBBS colleges in India
NEET UG Results 2025: As NEET aspirants await NEET UG 2025 results, they must be pondering which are the best medical colleges in the country to pursue MBBS. If you are one of them and are confused, here is the list of the top medical colleges in India according to the Ministry of Education's National Institutional Ranking Framework. We have analysed trends from the last four years and have presented a conclusion at the end. The National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) shows that the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi, is India's top medical college in the rankings. AIIMS Delhi has retained its first position for four consecutive years from the given time period of 2021 to 2024. NEET UG 2025 Analysis Following closely is the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh, which continues to hold the second spot consistently during this period. Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore, has also maintained its steady presence in third place across all four years. The fourth position is consistently occupied by the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS). However, the fifth rank has seen minor fluctuations. The Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER), Puducherry, secured this spot in 2023 and 2024, while Banaras Hindu University (BHU) took the position in 2022, and Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences (SGPGIMS), Lucknow, claimed it in 2021.
