Hyderabad, July 21: Seven students who secured 'zero marks' in all subjects in Eamcet this year made it to the final rank list released on Wednesday.
Earlier, 14 such students were declared qualified in Eamcet while the marks were announced on June 16. However, seven of them failed in Intermediate exams and had to be ejected from the rank list.
But the other seven students made it to the rank list, five in the engineering stream and two in the medical stream.
The five students can claim admission in engineering colleges as no minimum marks
are stipulated for scheduled caste/ scheduled tribe students and the state has a copious
2.60 lakh seats to offer in nearly 700 colleges.
But the two students who secured 'zero marks' would not be able to enter medical
colleges, thanks to the Medical Council of India's stipulation that candidates should get a minimum of 50 per cent marks in both Eamcet and in BiPC subjects in Intermediate.
But they can seek admission in agriculture, veterinary, home science and other allied
courses.
For the general category, the total marks in Eamcet is 160 and the qualifying mark is 25
per cent of the total which means students should score 40 marks for qualifying.
Interestingly, it is pretty difficult to get zero marks in Eamcet. The 14 students could
easily have scored nearly 30 marks even if they had chosen to blurb a single option
among A,B,C, and D for all questions.
This year, the pattern of exam was such that the students could have got 30 to 32 marks
for selecting the ‘A’ option for every question, 40 to 42 marks if they selected ‘B', 40 for
‘C’ and 30 for ‘D’. But the 14 students did not even bother to try their luck in this manner.
Instead, they handed over blank papers to invigilators after sitting in the exam centre for full three hours as they were probably sure that under the SC/ST quota they were bound to get a seat.