The closer you get to your goal, the more it hurts if you cannot achieve it. Being merit out brings immense pain and disappointment. Once you get screened out you feel bad, if you are not recommended you feel worse, but being merit out leaves you with a worst feeling (of course relegation and suspense can’t be compared). With the current scenario of selection, there is a huge number of increase in the merit out cases. The level of candidates has risen to a great deal, which matches up to the standards of the forces, so there are many candidates who get recommended, but due to constraints all can’t be taken in for training.
What is merit out?
The candidates, who get recommended in SSB, have to compete on an all India level based on their scores in SSB (and written in case the entry is not direct). The vacancies are limited and hence few are taken in for the final training and few are not. This is decided based on the merit list given by the recruitment center, which has candidates who have higher score. So comes the case of being merit out.
Why Merit Out?
As mentioned above the vacancies for every entry is limited. So there may be more candidates who are recommended from a center, but there might be lesser number of vacancies. Hence the candidates who score lesser marks are not taken in the final merit. Being recommended just means that you are fit for the forces, it will not guarantee your final admission in the academy. Candidates may feel that there are so many news about the shortage of officers in the forces. Then too why there are cases of merit outs? This is so because the capacities of training academies are limited, they have a limited resources to train limited candidates, hence this determines the vacancy. Also the requirement in that department might be limited for which you apply.
How to ensure being merit in?
Merit is a collective score of your performance in the SSB and written. In case of direct entries, it is only SSB. The key to success here is to score as much as possible. You need to first understand where you can score for sure. In psychological tests there is no idea that on what basis the marks are given, in interview also, it is dependent on the interviewer, and so is in few tasks in the Groups Tasks. So in order to score marks, first you need to score as much as possible in the written tests. Then you need to try and score as much as possible in the Officers Intelligent and Rating Test, in the screening, as its marks are added in the final merit list. Then you get a chance to score in the Individual Obstacle in the group tests. These are a few places where you can get calculated marks, so make sure you perform well in them.
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Quite motivating. I myself has experienced the pain of getting merit out last year in Army even though my SSB score was higher than AIR-1 in my merit list.
P.S- Don’t forget to take your written entrance exam as seriously as you take your SSB