Cutoffs Go Lower For Medicine; Admission List Gets Longer
Becoming a doctor is going to be comparatively easy this
year because the merit value for enrolling into medical colleges is likely to go
down by nearly 4% in relation to earlier years. Admission administrators
speculate that a student scoring as low as 75% might end up studying for an MBBS
degree. Another factor that will widen the pool of entrants is the addition of 450
seats for MBBS courses this year.
Most students fared badly in the Gujarat Common Entrance Test (GujCET). In the calculation
of merit, the test has 40% weight against 60 % of marks secured in class XII boards,
so cutoffs are likely to be low. The student topping the merit list this year has
scored 98.98%, which is the highest over the past three years. However, as one goes
down the merit list, marks plunge. In 2009, there was a 4.2% difference between
the topper and the student placed at the 100th spot. The difference has increased
to 5.46% in 2010. But this year, the topper has got the highest since 2009, while
the 100th student has got the lowest, at 93.18 per cent, a 7.32% difference. Bharat
Shah, the dean of B J Medical College, said that this year for the first time in
several years there was a wide gap between the ends of the merit spectrum. He said
usually admissions to medical courses ended in the range of one or two marks lower
than the toppers.
Officials in the joint admission committee for medical and para-medical courses
(JACMPC) said that lower down the merit list, where the distinction class begins,
marks are higher than they were last year. For instance, the 2,000th student in
the merit list got 73.02% this year against 72.25% scored by the student at the
same place in 2010.
Admissions to the open category in medical colleges had ended at 81% marks in 2009.
But in 2010, it came down to 79.13%. This year, with the increase of seats in three
medical colleges Sola Medical College and Gujarat Cancer Society medical college
in Ahmedabad, and Gotri Medical College in Vadodara merit is likely to be the lowest
over the past couple of years, said a JACMPC official.
Courtesy: Times of India
