Reality check: A case for reforming NEET Premium

NEET exam controversies, structural changes, and the need for fairness in medical college admissions discussed by Balaji Sampath.

Recently, the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) for undergraduate medical courses (MBBS and BDS) and the National Testing Agency (NTA) that conducts this exam have been in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. While many have already discussed the allegations of wrong-doing threadbare, let us take a step back to look at the bigger picture to put things in context.

This year, over 23 lakh students wrote NEET, competing for around 1.1 lakh MBBS seats across the country. This includes 56,405 seats in government medical colleges and 2,765 seats in private medical colleges. The annual fee in government medical colleges ranges from ₹13,000 to ₹74,000. In private medical colleges the annual fee varies from nearly ₹13 lakh to ₹22 lakh. For the government quota seats in private medical colleges, the annual fee is around ₹5 lakh.

Government college seats and government quota seats in private colleges are allotted based on the NEET scores rank list. Even a small increase in NEET score can mean getting into a top government medical college with a much lower fee. This makes NEET a very high stakes exam.

High stakes and large numbers is a deadly combination inviting cheating attempts. Just more policing cannot stop so many determined efforts to cheat. We need structural changes that significantly reduce the value gained by cheating.

One such structural change is to conduct NEET as a two-level exam. The first level exam is a qualifier exam that is taken by all aspirants (say 23 lakh). Only those who qualify (say 5 lakh students) are allowed to write the second level exam which is used to create the rank list.

The first level exam has huge scale but is low-stakes as it does not directly ensure a seat. The second-level exam has high-stakes but a smaller scale and can be more tightly controlled.

Restoring the sanctity of the exam process is just the first step needed. There is a fundamental issue that needs to be addressed.