In the past one year, the State government has done much to make sure that students were better prepared for the next round of NEET, or at least tried. From providing books (that did not reach everyone in need) to set up centres (which came a little too late), there was a plan. However, all that effort seems to have been of little help to students, who appeared for the exam from government schools in rural areas. Candidates in Coimbatore confessed that they were not able to answer several questions as most were out of their academic curriculum. The one-month coaching by the government had not prepared them well enough.
Physics and Chemistry sections of the test was the most challenging for M Vanitha, a farmer’s daughter from Palani. “We did not have time to prepare exclusively for NEET. It was only completing the class XII board exams that we got a month’s time to study at the centre set up by the government. However, that did not help much. While in Biology (section) I attempted to answer the questions, in Physics, I was not able to even understand the question,” she recounts.
R Sathyabama, who had scored 480 marks in her class X board exam and is expecting a similar result for her class XII exams too, says that she did not expect the test to be this tough. She had trouble with Chemistry, saying she was not able to identify the equations though she is quite good in the subject. She also had trouble with Tamil words in the paper. “Teachers in government school gave us training for a month. They provided a copy of the CBSE textbooks and also gave mock tests with question papers of last year. But, none of that were there in the paper today. Only Botany and Zoology sections were easy. Vanitha has lost hope of becoming a doctor after her performance on Sunday and thinks might have to opt for Agriculture. “I cannot afford to prepare for NEET again. So, I will be applying to TNAU after results are announced,” she said.
Sathyabama too has decided to stop pursuing the dream of becoming a medical profession and would engineering instead. Difficult exam aside, rural students were thrown off their zone amidst the competition in the big city. Santhosh, a boy from a village in Virudhunagar district and student of a government boys higher secondary school there, is of the opinion that he might have done better had he taken up the exam in his own village. This is his first visit to a city and naturally, he had felt very out-of-place. “I knew the exam would be tough and I was mentally prepared. Soon after the board exams, I started to purchase study material and did my best to prepare for the exam. But the atmosphere here is completely different. I could not concentrate on the test for everything around me was disturbing,” he says about his experience in Coimbatore.
