Mrinal Kutteri of Telangana, Tanmay Gupta of Delhi and Karthika G. Nair of Maharashtra have scored a perfect 720 marks in the NEET examination to jointly snag the All India number one ranking.
They topped the list of 8.7 lakh candidates who qualified for medical and dental counselling through the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET-UG) this year. This is the first year that there is no age-based tie-break for candidates with identical scores, allowing three students to share the top ranking.
Almost 15.5 lakh students wrote the examination in September, significantly higher than the 13.6 lakh who did so last year, although the examination was delayed due to the second wave of the pandemic.
Cut-off scores were lower in most categories, with general category students qualifying with a cut-off score of 138 in comparison to 147 last year.
For general category students from economically weaker sections, the cut-off is 122, while the cut-off for students from OBC, SC and ST communities is 108.
