Career consultant Jayaprakash Gandhi pointed out that while performance of the state’s top-tier has declined, many students managed to feature in the top 500 ranks. “In previous years, questions were more direct, often formula-based or memory oriented. This year’s paper was more analytical and required strong conceptual clarity,” he said.

According to Gandhi, TN students tend to struggle when question papers are more concept-heavy, whereas students from states like Rajasthan manage to perform well consistently. “Students need to build strong conceptual foundations in Classes 10 and 11 before moving on to advanced topics,” he said, adding that the cut-off is expected to come down by 100 marks compared to last year.

This year was also the first time the number of students appearing for the exam from Tamil Nadu saw a drop, at least in the last five years. However, a similar trend was observed this year at the national level.

A NEET coaching expert, who preferred not to be quoted, said that one of the reasons for the drop could be a growing interest in engineering courses as there is a general perception that a student will invariably require one more year after Class 12 to prepare for NEET. “However, we need to observe the trend for at least another year before drawing conclusions,” the expert added.

The number of students, who took the examination this year in Tamil also witnessed a sharp drop by nearly 27% from 36,335 in 2024 to 26,580 in 2025.

Speaking to TNIE, S Subbulakshmi, Soorya Narayanan’s mother said, her son, a student of Pushpalata Vidya Mandir CBSE School in Tirunelveli, had also secured AIR 388 in JEE Advanced and has already secured a seat in electrical engineering in IIT-Madras. However, he would aspire to join MBBS in AIIMS, New Delhi.

While Subbulakshmi is a homemaker, Soorya Narayanan’s father M Sankar Subramanian works as a travelling ticket examiner in the railways. In Class 12, Soorya Narayanan had scored centum in Maths and Chemistry, 99 in Physics and 98 in Biology.

(With inputs from M Abdul Rabi @ Tirunelveli)

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