The qualifying percentile for NEET being kept as low as 50th percentile has meant that about 50 students who scored single digit marks in physics or chemistry out of 180 in the entrance exam got admission in medical colleges in Punjab alone in 2018. Of these, seven had zero marks out of 180 in one of these subjects and another 10 had negative marks. This raises questions about the rationale of testing students in physics and chemistry if after getting such abysmal scores they still managed to get into MBBS.Over 85% of those who got admission with single digit marks in at least one subject were admitted to private colleges. As TOI 's analysis last year of the 2017 MBBS admissions showed, colleges charging the highest fees typically had the poorest average NEET scores for those they admitted. In Punjab's case in 2018, Adesh Medical College, which charges about Rs 68 lakh for the full MBBS course, accounted for more than half the students admitted with single digit, zero or negative marks in physics or chemistry. The college does not come under fee regulation since it is affiliated to a group-owned university. Adesh also had the lowest average NEET score for MBBS admissions among all the medical colleges in the state.While this analysis is for Punjab alone, the 2017 experience suggests the pattern would be the same in other states too and much worse in many. However, since neither the Medical Counselling Committee nor the Medical Council of India make the NEET score, rank, percentile and individual subject marks scored by students admitted each year public, the farce of claiming that NEET has ensured that all admissions are 'merit-based' continues.In most colleges with high fees, despite students with high scores being eligible for admission, they are forced to drop out as they cannot afford the fees. With over 7 lakh students qualifying for about 65,000 seats (a little over 70,000 this year), there were enough candidates with poor scores but deep pockets who could take the place of those with high scores who could not afford the hefty fees.Just how bad is a zero or negative score in a subject? The NEET exam consists of 45 objective type questions each in physics and chemistry and 90 in biology. Each question has four options. A correct answer gets four marks but a wrong answer leads to one negative mark. Elementary mathematics shows that a person marking the answers at random is likely to end up with about one-fourth of the answers right and the other three-fourths wrong. That would mean a score of about 10 out of 180 (11x4 for the right answers minus 34 for the wrong ones). So, someone getting less than 10 out of 180 is doing worse than an illiterate person would do if asked to randomly pick answers. Yet, such a candidate is not just qualifying through NEET but getting into medical college.Despite these anomalies being pointed out last year, the government has refused to fix individual subject cut-offs.