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NEW DELHI: The decision by the National Board of Examination in Medical Sciences (NBEMS) to conduct the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (Postgraduate) or NEET-PG 2025 exam in two shifts for admission to postgraduate medical courses, has sparked concerns over the normalization process and transparency in the conduct of the two exams.
In a notice on Monday, NBEMS said it will conduct the NEET-PG 2025 on June 15 in two shifts on a computer-based platform. This is the second time that the board is conducting the NEET-PG exam in two shifts.
In 2024, the board conducted the exam in two shifts from 9am to 12:30pm and from 3:30pm to 7pm at 416 centres in 170 cities for 2,28,540 candidates.
The board is yet to release the detailed information bulletin for NEET-PG 2025. Last year, this bulletin was issued just a day ahead of the exam
Bharat Rathore, a NEET-PG 2025 aspirant from Jaipur, said, “There is no need to conduct this exam in two shifts as there are not even 3 lakh students who are sitting for this exam compared to NEET-UG in which over 15 lakh students sit for exams in just one shift. I am appearing in the NEET PG exam for the first time, and I am worried about the difficulty levels of the shift in which I would be taking the exam.”
In the NEET-PG exam of 800 marks, candidates who have an MBBS degree, have to solve 200 multiple-choice questions in online mode in 3 hours and 30 minutes. Candidates get 4 marks for each correct answer and 1 mark is deducted if their response is incorrect.
“I sat in the second shift of NEET-PG 2024 and scored 470 marks. I got 76 percentile and 51000 rank after normalization. Paper was easy in the first shift but it was difficult in the second shift. Many who scored the same marks in the first shift had better ranks than me,” said Samyak Bansal who plans to sit for the exam again this year.
“Conducting NEET-PG in two shifts is undesirable as it does not provide a level playing field for all students. A section of students gets an easy paper in one shift and another gets a difficult paper in the next shift. There is also no clarity on their normalisation process which is used in providing percentile and ranks for admission,” he added.
NBEMS officials did not respond to HT’s queries.
Since the question papers in the two shifts are different, the board conducts a normalisation process to ensure that students are evaluated fairly, regardless of the shift they were assigned by adjusting scores to a common scale.
For NEET-PG 2024, NBEMS implemented the AIIMS normalization in which the highest score in each shift is standardized to the 100th percentile, and percentile scores are calculated with precision up to seven decimal places to reduce ties. The marks obtained between the highest and lowest scores in both shifts are converted to appropriate percentiles.
For instance, if the top score in Shift 1 is 80%, it will be normalized to the 100th percentile. Similarly, if the highest score in Shift 2 is 82%, it will also be set as the 100th percentile for that shift. This method ensures a fair comparison across different exam sessions. Percentiles provide a relative measure of performance, offering a clearer picture of a candidate’s standing among peers. For example, a percentile of 90 indicates that the candidate has outperformed 90% of all test-takers.
Doctors’ associations have also written to NBEMS to seek a single shift exam.
In a letter to NBEMS, the Federation of All India Medical Association (FAIMA) said the normalisation of marks has “historically been associated with inconsistencies and potential biases.”
“Different question papers in different shifts inherently introduce variations in difficulty levels, making it challenging to establish a truly fair normalization process. This can lead to undue advantages or disadvantages for candidates based on their assigned shift, compromising the examination results’ credibility. A single-shift examination ensures uniformity in difficulty level, eliminates the need for normalisation, and upholds the transparency and fairness of the selection process,” the federation said, urging the board to conduct the examination in a single shift to “uphold the principles of fairness, transparency, and meritocracy.”
The United Doctors Front (UDF), which has written to Union health minister JP Nadda, said a single-shift examination ensures that all candidates answer the same set of questions under identical conditions, “eliminating the need for normalisation and potential disputes arising from it.”
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