The Central Board of Education announced on Monday that National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) will be conducted on May 8, a Thursday. This is unusual for a national entrance exam since they are usually held on a Sunday. There are a few other changes to the rules this time to NEET, but all the new changes and instructions have been listed out for you here.
- The applications for the exam is ONLINE only and will be made available from the FOURTH week of January on the CBSE and NEET NIC website
- The students are required to mandatorily have an Aadhar card, make the online payment and submit all the forms and details by March 1. The results of the exam will be announced in the first week of June 2018
- MHRD Minister had previously said that a part of the syllabus could contain State syllabus but the CBSE has stated that the syllabus for this year will be the same as last year. The students have to follow the CBSE syllabus to prepare for the exam
- The minimum age to apply for the exam is 17 and maximum is 25 for general category and 30 for SC/ST/OBC. A total of nine attempts are allowed for the former category and 14 attempts for the latter categories
- There will 180 objective questions - 4 marks for a right answer and negative score of one mark for a wrong answer.
- The exam will be held in nine languages - English, Hindi, Tamil, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi and Telugu languages. Urdu has been added this year
- No full sleeves. One of the major controversies with NEET last year was the dress code — students were made to undergo strict checking and had their sleeves ripped out because they were wearing full sleeved shirts or dresses. This year the students have been asked to follow the same rules.
- Light clothes, no jewellery, no shoes and only sandals. Students in burqa or any other traditional clothing are requested to come earlier to go through the mandatory checking. Only married women get to wear bangles