New Delhi, 13 September 2021 – Nearly 16 lakh students wrote the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) on Sunday, 11th September 2021 to secure admission to undergraduate medical and dental programmes (MBBS, BDS, AYUSH, Veterinary, and other medical/paramedical courses) across the country. This year, more than 95% of aspirants appeared for the NEET exam amid the pandemic, which is quite high from the previous year’s percentage of 85.57.
The National Testing Agency conducted the examination in a single offline session, using the pen-and-paper mode, with papers available in 13 languages. The languages included Hindi, Punjabi, Assamese, Bengali, Odia, Gujarati, Marathi, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil, Urdu, and English. Among the languages, Punjabi and Malayalam were the new additions.
NEET 2021 was held at more than 3,800 centres in 202 cities in India and abroad. The exam authorities followed all the Government-underlined COVID-19 safety protocols to prevent cases of infection. In fact, in many centres, separate rooms were provided for students who tested positive.
NEET 2021 – State-Wise Percentage of Appeared Students
A record 16.14 lakh candidates had registered for NEET this year, which is the highest in the past 5 years. As per NTA, the maximum and the minimum number of test-takers have been registered in Jaipur and Kavaratti (Lakshadweep Islands) respectively.
- The seven centres in Tiruppur district recorded 97.06% attendance
- Coimbatore recorded 95.35% attendance at the eight test centres, which included one in the Tiruppur district.
- In Tamil Nadu, more than 1.10 lakh students had registered themselves for the test, which was conducted at 224 centres.
- In Salem, NEET was held at 28 centres and arrangements were made for about 15,067 students to take it.
- In Tiruchi, the test was held at 21 centres. Of the 9,105 candidates, only 8,753 took the three-hour test, reporting a total of 96.1% attendance.
- In Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar, about 11,800 candidates appeared for the exam at 28 examination centres.
- Nearly 10,967 candidates appeared for the NEET exam in 16 centres in Bhubaneswar.
- 3.4 lakh students appeared for NEET 2021 in Indian languages.
- 2.3 lakh students had chosen Hindi as their preferred language.
- 50,000 candidates chose to appear for NEET-UG 2021 in Gujarati.
- 35,000 Bengali candidates and 20,000 Tamil candidates also appeared for the exam in their regional languages this year.
Note: As per one of the NTA officials, nearly 18,000 candidates from Chennai had registered for the NTA NEET exam 2021, out of which, around 17,000 aspirants appeared for the exam. More than 800 students were recorded absent.
| NEET Statistics | NEET 2021 | NEET 2020 |
| Number of candidates registered for the exam | 16,14,000 (approx.) | 15,97,433 |
| Number of candidates who appeared in the exam | 14,16,000 lakh (approx.) | 13,66,945 |
| Number of candidates who did not appear | 1,94,000 lakh (approx.) | 2,30,490 |
| Male candidates | 3,43,556 | 7,16,586 |
| Female candidates | 7,48,866 | 8,80,843 |
NEET 2021 – Dominance of Women
This year, a large percentage of female candidates have appeared and qualified for the NEET 2021 exam. The number of female candidates increased by a stark 40.8% when compared with the total percentage over the 5-year count. More than 9 lakh candidates registered for the latest NEET-UG admissions.
NEET 2021 – Kerala with Best Male-Female Ratio
Amid COVID-19, Kerala saw the best female to male ratio of NEET students. Close to 2 lakh female candidates appeared from this state, which is higher than most of the other states. A close calculation (unofficial) highlighted that the female-male ratio during this year’s NEET exam was 3.8: 1!
The 6 states with a fewer number of female candidates included West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Tripura, Rajasthan, Bihar, and Assam.
NEET 2021 – Additional Help from NTA
With the schools and various coaching centres operating online amid this pandemic, a bulk of NEET preparation took place online. However, the added stress of uncertainty over the conduct of the board examinations took a toll on the preparation of NEET.
So, for the first time, NEET has provided an added benefit to the aspirants. An extra 20 questions to the existing 180 has been added so that students had some choice in the question paper, unlike the previous years. The concession was on account of the pandemic and the reduced syllabus. The NEET 2021 question paper was of 720 marks in total.
