What NEET UG Statistics Says About Seats, Applications Numbers And Female Applicants (Image: pixabay)This year’s National Eligibility Cum Entrance Test Undergraduate (NEET UG) 2024 exam statistics reveals some very interesting numbers for the entrance exam to medical, dental and allied health programs. As the application window for the NEET UG closed on March 16, 2024, the registrations surged to 24 lakh which is nearly 12 percent up from the last year.
The increase in the number of candidates leads to higher competition for candidates if the number of seats is not increasing proportionally. In the past years, the percentage increase in the number of seats was less than the percentage increase in the registering candidates. As per the data available, nearly 11 percent of additional candidates are appearing every year. However, the added number of seats remained below 11 percent points which was merely 3 percent in 2021-22.
This year’s 2024 exam has seen a significant development in terms of these numbers as the number of seats was increased by a whopping 17 percentage points (over 6000 seats added) to 56,385 across the 706 colleges in the country. This increase makes the seat-to-candidate ratio 1:42.2 means for every seat around 42 students will be competing. The ratio has become the best in the past nine years.
According to the past 10 years’ trends, the entrance exam registered more female candidates with 57.2 percent females in comparison to 42.8 percent male candidates. This records the highest female percentage of candidature so far.
Notably, the National Testing Agency will administer the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET (UG)) – 2024 in pen and paper (offline) mode on May 5, 2024, from 2:00 PM to 05:20 PM, across the nation and in 14 places outside of India.
As per the NTA, another major advancement is that the new syllabus has been prepared based on recommendations received from the National Medical Commission (NMC) and various boards. This move is in line with the changes made to the syllabus for classes IX to XII due to academic disruptions during the pandemic.