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With a percentile score of 99.99, the Punjab boy is followed by Madhya Pradesh’s Archit Gupta and Manish Mulchandani at second and third rank.
Muktsar’s Navdeep Singh topped the CBSE’s National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET), securing 697 marks out of 720 on Friday to ace the premier medical entrance exam that 11.38 lakh students took on May 7 and 6.11 lakh cleared.
At least 2.66 lakh were male aspirants, while 3.45 lakh were females. Eight transgenders also appeared for the test, of which five have qualified. Navdeep’s achievement comes less than a fortnight after Sarvesh Mehtani, a student from Panchkula adjoining Chandigarh, topped the country in the entrance test for the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).
“I was expecting a good rank in NEET, but never thought I would top it,” says 18-year-old Navdeep, who aims to study at Maulana Azad Medical College in Delhi.
With a percentile score of 99.99, the Punjab boy is followed by Madhya Pradesh’s Archit Gupta and Manish Mulchandani at second and third rank.
Apart from Navdeep, Nikita Goyal from Bathinda secured the eighth rank in the test conducted for admission to MBBS and BDS courses.
From Haryana, Kanish Tayal was seventh, while Aditi Goyal secured rank 22.
Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh tweeted, “Congratulations Navdeep Singh for topping this year’s NEET. You have indeed done Punjab proud. Best wishes.”
STUDIES AND CRICKET
About his interests, Navdeep said, “I have just two passions, studies and cricket.”
He completed his Class 12 from Shivalik Public Senior Secondary School in Mukstar with 88% and later took coaching for NEET at a private institute in Chandigarh.
Describing his son as hardworking, his father Gopal Singh, 47, who is a government school principal in Muktsar’s Charewan village, says, “He slogged to be among the top 10. Right from childhood, he did only two things, study and sleep. He slept for just six hours after passing his Class 10 with this aim.”
“I teach physics so my son developed an interest in the subject. It’s hard work that matters not the place from where you do your Class 12,” Gopal said.
He said his son secured 202nd rank in AIIMS as his general knowledge was not good, but that did not matter in NEET.
Navdeep has a younger brother, who studies in Class 10, and his mother Simarjeet Kaur, 43, works at the Life Insurance Corporation of India.
