New Delhi- Surpassing the record of the last 8 years, this year's National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test-Undergraduate (NEET UG 2024) has got 24 lakh registrations for the academic year 2024-25 for admission to MBBS and BDS courses.
The entrance exam NEET UG 2024 is going to be held on May 5 (Sunday) from 2:00 pm to 5:20 pm in offline mode. The National Testing Agency (NTA) is going to conduct the NEET UG 2024 exam across the country and in 14 cities across the world.
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NEET-UG is the biggest entrance exam in India so far, surpassing CUET-UG 2023 by more than five lakh this year. As per the TOI media news report, this year's NEET-UG has seen an increase of 3 lakh registrations compared to 2023-24, the highest jump in the last seven years.
In 2016 NEET-UG saw eight lakh registrations and in 2017 it marked 11.3 lakh registrations which was the first big jump for NEET-UG. After crossing 10 lakh registrations in 2017, the growth has increased to 12.4 lakh so far.
Apart from this, applications have increased by more than 11 per cent every year except the two Covid years i.e. 2020-21. Between 2021 and 2022, the number of candidates increased by 16% points against an increase of 3% points in seats. By 2023, the increase in the number of seats in government colleges was not proportionate to the increase in the number of applicants. In 2023, the seats were hiked by 11% points, just below the surge in the number of applicants (11.5%). After a decade, the growth level of seats increased to 17 in 2024 which is higher than the applicant's ratio of 14.1.
The number of seats in government colleges in 2024 is 56,385 in 706 colleges, increasing from 48,212 seats in 322 colleges in 2023, the largest increase in the last 15 years. The largest expansion in seats occurred in 2021 when 8,329 seats were added to 2020's tally of 33,893.
For more than a decade now, the number of women appearing for this medical entrance exam has been ahead of men, with it standing at 56.7% in 2023, 53.5% in 2022 and 51% in 2019. Meanwhile, the participation ratio of women in NEET-UG in 2024 is 57.2% which is the highest in the last few years.
had earlier reported that scrapping computerized draw procedure for deciding the rank of joint scorers in the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) exam, which was introduced earlier this year, the National Testing Agency (NTA) has once again opted for its old policy.