Education · Exams · Math
NTA Never Fails to Surprise
How 26 students scored 100 percentile in JEE Main 2026 — but 17 students who got a perfect 720/720 in NEET 2024 couldn’t even touch 100.
Based on official NTA press releases — NEET (UG) 2024 re-revised result (July 26, 2024) and JEE (Main) 2026 Session 2 result (April 20, 2026)
Every year when NTA drops results, the same question does the rounds: how does percentile work, and why do some toppers get 100 while others get 99.999-something? The 2024 NEET and 2026 JEE results, sitting side by side, answer this beautifully — because they use fundamentally different formulas.
The initial NEET 2024 result was controversial — grace marks and paper leak allegations led to a Supreme Court intervention. On July 26, 2024, NTA declared a re-revised result. In this final official result, 17 candidates scored 720/720 with a percentile of 99.9992714. The figure of 67 toppers that circulated widely online refers to the original contested result, not the final one.
It all comes down to one word: “strictly”
Both exams use a percentile formula, but they differ in one critical way. JEE uses an inclusive definition — it counts candidates scoring less than or equal to your score. NEET uses a strict definition — only candidates scoring strictly less than you.
In JEE, when you score the highest in your shift, every candidate (including yourself) scored ≤ your marks, so the numerator equals the denominator and you get exactly 100. In NEET, the topper looks for people who scored strictly less — and finds everyone except the 16 others who also hit 720. So the numerator is always less than the denominator, and 100 is permanently out of reach.
In NEET’s formula, a perfect 720/720 cannot yield 100 percentile — not because you didn’t deserve it, but because the math simply doesn’t allow it.
The 2024 NEET numbers, verified
With 23,33,297 candidates appeared and 17 at the top score, we can verify the percentile exactly:
But JEE has an extra layer: normalization
JEE Main is conducted across multiple sessions and shifts — Session 1 in January 2026 (10 shifts) and Session 2 in April 2026 (9 shifts). Since different shifts have different difficulty levels, raw marks cannot be directly compared. NTA first normalizes scores across shifts using an equating process, converting raw marks onto a scale of 0–300. Only then is the percentile formula applied — within each shift separately.
This is why the JEE 2026 press release explicitly states the NTA score is not the same as the percentage of marks obtained, and why 26 candidates from different states and different shifts can all land at exactly 100.0000000 — they each topped their respective shifts after normalization, and the inclusive formula does the rest.
| Parameter | JEE Main 2026 | NEET UG 2024 |
|---|---|---|
| Exam format | Multi-session, multi-shift (CBT) | Single day, single sitting (pen-paper) |
| Total unique candidates | ~15,38,468 | ~23,33,297 |
| Score type used | Normalized NTA score (0–300 scale) | Raw marks (−180 to 720) |
| Percentile formula | ≤ (inclusive) | < (strict) |
| Top percentile possible | 100.0000000 | Never 100 — always fractionally less |
| Top scorers | 26 candidates at 100 | 17 candidates at 99.9992714 |
| Decimal places reported | 7 | 7 |
Source: NTA press releases — JEE (Main) 2026 Session 2 (Apr 20, 2026) and NEET (UG) 2024 re-revised result (Jul 26, 2024)
How are the 17 NEET toppers ranked 1 to 17?
Since all 17 share an identical percentile of 99.9992714, NTA applies a sequential tie-breaking hierarchy as officially stated in the press release:
a
b
c
d
e-g
h
Since all 17 candidates scored a perfect 720 — meaning full marks in every subject — criteria (a) through (g) cannot differentiate them either. The final tiebreaker is simply the application number in ascending order, which is why the official list shows all 17 with NEET Rank 1 and identical percentile scores.
The difference between 100 percentile and 99.9992714 isn’t about performance — it’s about which side of a “≤” vs “<” the formula designer chose to stand on.
JEE says: you are among the best in your shift, so you belong at 100. NEET says: 100 means everyone is below you — and since 16 others matched your score, that’s not quite true.
Both are mathematically defensible. Both are self-consistent. But only one of them will ever let you tell your parents you scored 100 percentile — and in India’s entrance exam culture, that difference matters more than any formula ever intended.