14 score zero, pass Eamcet

As many as 14 students who got zero marks in all subjects were declared as qualified in Eamcet this year. Eight of them can also enter engineering colleges as no minimum marks are stipulated for scheduled caste/scheduled tribe students and the state has a copious 2.25 lakh seats to offer.

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 even in that manner.

The eight students in the engineering stream and six in the medical stream were so lazy that they did not even bother to blurb options in OMR answer sheet and handed over blank papers to invigilators after sitting in the exam centre for full three hours as they are sure that under the SC/ST quota they are bound to get a seat.

Thanks to the Medical Council of India’s stipulation that candidates should get a minimum of 50 per cent marks Eamcet and in BiPC subjects in Intermediate, these students are not eligible for admissions into medical courses.

However, eight of them can get admission in engineering colleges if they want. “We will give ranks to them after giving weight to their intermediate marks,” said an Eamcet official. “They can appear for engineering counselling and claim seats. It is easy to secure seats in engineering colleges since the state has around 2.25 lakh seats in 650 colleges.”

For all you know, these zero graders would be building bridges or designing software a few years from now.