NEET UG 2025: Grueling Paper Leaves Aspirants in Tears: By Rajnish Mohan

On May 4, 2025, lakhs of students across India appeared for the NEET UG examination -an annual gateway to India's medical colleges. However, this year’s exam proved to be exceptionally challenging, with students and parents emerging from centers visibly shaken. What should have been a routine culmination of months of preparation turned emotional for thousands of young aspirants. Post-exam analyses from leading coaching institutes across the country have raised serious concerns about the paper’s design. The Physics section, in particular, was labeled “too complex for a typical medical aspirant”, featuring high-level numerical and complicated language that left many students confused. Chemistry was moderately tough but leaned heavily on conceptual understanding and Biology, usually a scoring section, turned out to be lengthy and unexpectedly twisted with assertion-reason, match-the-following and paragraph-based questions. One senior faculty from a reputed institute commented, “In the last 10 years, we haven’t seen a paper this difficult and time-consuming. Completing it in 3 hours was nearly impossible.” Outside several exam centres, the atmosphere was tense and emotional. Many 17–18-year-old students were seen in tears, expressing disappointment and helplessness. Parents tried to comfort them, some with words, others with silence. Social media was quickly flooded with images and videos capturing this wave of emotion, sparking conversations around exam pressure and mental health. Historically, NEET UG has seen toppers scoring a perfect 720/720, but this year, experts predict a significant drop in top scores. Given the difficulty, it's expected that scores even in the low 500s might secure government college seats, a stark contrast to the 650+ range of previous years. 
This shift could drastically alter admission trends and cut-offs across categories. The unexpected toughness of the exam has led to widespread calls for a review of the paper-setting process. Students and parents are demanding greater alignment with NCERT syllabi and a more balanced structure that reflects the purpose of a medical entrance test - to test aptitude in biology and related sciences, not mathematical trickery. As the National Testing Agency (NTA) prepares to release official answers and results, students across the nation are left grappling not just with questions they answered - but with questions about the change of the process itself.