NEET 2018: Chennai PSBB girl lone ranker in top 50
The Central Board of Secondary Education announced the NEET results earlier today, among the 1,14,602 students from Tamil Nadu who appeared for the exam, only 45,336 qualified for counseling. Chennai's K Keerthana from Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan School got the state first rank and an All India Rank of 12.
Keethana got an overall score of 676 in the exam while the national first ranker, Kalpana Kumari, Bihar managed to get 691. Keerthana is the only student from Tamil Nadu to figure in the top 50 ranks in the country. The medical aspirant is currently travelling from Tirupathi back home to Chennai so was unable for her phone call but her tutor, Balaji Sampath says that he is probably more thrilled than his student about the results.
Keerthana standing in the middle with two of her friends at her school graduation
"When I saw that a Keerthana had topped the exam from the State, I knew it was her. I immediately messaged her to ask if it was her and her mother immediately called me to tell me the good news. They are travelling home from Tirupathi so they said they had been planning to come here and tell me the good news. I'm sure I'm more excited by this news than Keerthana herself," he said beaming.
Keerthana had been going to Sampath's Aha Guru coaching classes since she was in the tenth standard, "She used to come for Physics, we had only recently started NEET coaching as well," he said. The student had attended Sampath's classes for a year before switching to the online version of his coaching classes," We used to be based in Ashok Nagar so she used to come there, but we moved to T Nagar so I didn't want her to travel so far so she used to use our online classes," he added. Besides these classes, Sampath said that she would go to him during their doubt clearing classes.
Balaji Sampath, Keerthana's tutor at Aha Guru
"She always asked a lot of questions and would also WhatsApp me to ask her queries. She was always an exceptionally bright student that's why I expected the rank," Sampath said. But did he really think she would get the State First rank,"Well, that's always a little far-fetched to think about, we wish it but usually scared to expect that much. I knew she would do very well but this is still a surprise," he said.
This was what Balaji Sampath had to say about Keerthana on FB-
Sampath says that Keerthana is also a KVPY scholar and was selected to represent Indian at the Research Science Institue at MIT in USA."We have a lot of challenge tests at Aha that she consistently topped. We always knew she would pursue a science-related career," he said.
Over the last few years though, Keerthana who is the daughter of a doctor wanted to pursue medicine but Sampath says that she might still prefer research over just being a doctor,"She has always shown an interest in research so I think she will just wait for the results of all the exams she has attempted and then make a decision," the tutor said.
