Over nine lakh students appeared for Tamil Nadu Higher Secondary Examination this year out of which 7.8 lakh students passed maintaining the state's above 90 pass percentage. Over the last few years, TN has always managed to stay above the 90 mark - the reason possibly being the fact that students get expected questions, rote coaching and lenient evaluation. However, this is the second last year before the Tamil Nadu Board changes the syllabus for the Plus Two students in order to educate the students "on par" with the rest of the national boards in the country. 

After a constant rise in the pass percentage over the last four years, the pass percentage dipped this year a little, but only by a percent, 91.1 percent, that is 7,84,081 students successfully cracked the exam. As always the girls did better than the boys this year too - among the school candidates only 87.7 per cent of the boys passed, while 94.1 percent of the girl students passed this year.

Maintaining its stance to not reveal the top three ranks so as to not discriminate and be encouraging of all students, the government did not name any of the toppers for the second year running. However, it is safe to believe that the girls definitely did get more top ranks than the boys since 181 girls have managed to get above 1180 marks and only 50 boys have managed the same marks. Only 1440 boys scored between 1151-1180 in comparison to 3407 girls who scored the same marks.

Virudhanagar district had the highest number of pass percentage this year with 97.05 per cent of the students passing this year, followed by Erode and Tiruppur. Chennai's percentage increased from 92.99 last year to 93.09 this year.  Among the differently-abled candidates, 90.95 percent of the blind students passed, while 75.92 deaf and dumb students and 85.33 of the physically challenged students managed to make the cut this year.