Yesterday, April 16, a table of information went viral among Indian medicos and medical aspirants on X (formerly known as Twitter), adding to the furore against the two-shift exam system in the upcoming National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test Postgraduate 2025 (NEET-PG 2025).
The table claims to contain the distribution of questions from various subjects throughout the years.
Aspirants contended that the number of questions has been fluctuating heavily over the years, and the differences in the number of questions from certain subjects were too high in last year’s exam, which was conducted in two shifts.
According to the data, while the question paper for NEET-PG 2024 Shift 1 had 7 questions from anatomy, Shift 2 had 16. Similarly, Pharmacology had 8 questions in Shift 1, while Shift 2 had 18 questions.
Similar gaps in the number of questions were also allegedly found in Biochemistry, Pathology, Community Medicine and Otolaryngology or ENT (Ear, Nose, Throat).
Last year, the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences (NBEMS) conducted NEET-PG in two shifts, in order to make up for the time lost due to the postponement of the exam from June to August in the wake of the NEET-UG paper leak controversy.
Further, the final scores of the exam would be calculated by normalising scores from both shifts, the NBE further informed.
The announcement sent panic bells ringing among aspirants, who were afraid that the exam would have different difficulty levels and were concerned about the efficiency of the normalisation formula. They urged the NBE to disclose the normalisation formula and conduct the shift in a single shift.
Therefore, the data from the table only serves to reconfirm their fears about the two-shift system.
Experts speak
“This is only proof of the flaws of the double shift system,” says Dr Nikita Nanwani, NEET educator and Founder of Medsynapse, an online NEET coaching platform.
Because of such vast differences in the composition of the question papers of the two shifts, she says that students end up appearing for two exams with completely different standards, which always ends up being unfair to students of one shift.
“We saw what happened last year due to the two-shift system, and the confusion it caused among candidates,” she stated.
Further, Dr Nanwani added that while the NBEMS was always notorious for their lack of transparency in releasing question banks from previous years’ question papers, answer keys and the candidates’ answer sheets, the double shift system only made these issues worse.
“Students are left in the dark about what to expect in the exam, so they attempt NEET-PG with a lot of uncertainty. Given that it is such an important exam for their careers, it certainly warrants more transparency,” she adds.
"Does not suggest..."
However, some experts argue that a mere difference in the number of questions in two sessions does not suggest differences in difficulty between the two papers.
“Even if Session 1’s question paper has 10 questions from Anatomy, and Session 2 asks 5, it doesn’t mean that Session 1 is more difficult than Session 2,” says Rakesh Jain, NEET-PG mentor and Founder of NEET Navigator.
He adds that subjects in the NEET-PG syllabus cannot be categorised as easy or difficult, and there are both easy and difficult questions in all subjects.
“A varying number of questions from each subject does not indicate varying difficulty levels, only two unique papers,” he said.
Moreover, this would have been a bigger issue if the NBEMS had a specified number of questions they must take from each subject while setting the question paper, Jain added.
“That way, you can challenge the NBE, given that the data being circulated is accurate. You could even approach the courts. However, that isn’t the case, so there is not much you can do about it,” he said, while advising candidates not to give in to these rumours without verification.
