Why do NEET cut-offs vary widely for medical colleges at close NIRF ranks?


The MBBS admission in India, irrespective of the medical college’s National Institutional Research Framework (NIRF), largely favours people with deeper pockets. In case of both the governments and private medical institutions that stand close to each other in NIRF rankings, the educational standards decide the NIRF rankings, the better the NIRF rankings the better is the educational standards. 

In a government college, the seats go to reserved-category students with a higher rank than the cut-off ranks at a private deemed-to-be university. A major difference is that private deemed universities do not have any reservation category and the fees are far more expensive than government colleges.

Last updated: 02 Jun 2022

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As per the National Medical Council data, there are 284 government colleges offering 43,400 MBBS seats in India and 269 private medical colleges with 41,515 MBBS seats. The 38 Deemed-to-be universities offer 7,450 MBBS seats, almost 10 percent of total MBBS seats in the country.

Government institutions reserve medical seats for historically-marginalised communities who typically gain admission at lower NEET cut-offs than their “general category” counterparts. However, the data shows that they still score far higher than the last students who paid their way into private institutions where there is no reservation.

The NIRF rankings are determined based on parameters such as Teaching, Learning and Resources (TLR), Research and Professional Practice (RP), Graduation Outcomes (GO), Outreach and Inclusivity (OI) and Peer Perception.

NEET Counselling: AIQ admission

As per data, medical colleges in the top NIRF rankings are mostly government and private Deemed-to-be universities, with a few exceptions of private or self-financing colleges. The admission to 15 percent of seats in every government medical college and all seats in deemed to be universities is through a counselling process conducted by the Directorate General of Health Sciences (DGHS) on behalf of the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC), under the ministry of health and family welfare.


While the deemed universities can be private or public, the management of the institution is a trust or society and there is no unpinning state or central law. All seats in these institutions are considered part of the AIQ. The current analysis does not include private medical colleges that feature in the NIRF list, since such colleges admit through state-level counselling.

NEET closing rank

The details of NEET UG Exam closing ranks of the medical colleges that participated in the NEET UG Counselling 2021 is given below:

College Name

NIRF Rank

NEET UG 2021 Cut-off

Amrita School of Medicine, Kochi

6

1,04,252

Institute of Medical Sciences Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi

7

General- 970
EWS- 2,711
OBC- 1,987
SC- 45,182
ST- 32,574

Maulana Azad Medical College, Delhi

17

Gen- 90
EWS- 446
OBC- 307
SC- 1,475
ST- 2,334

Vardhman Mahavir Medical College & Safdarjung Hospital

18

Gen- 163
EWS- 447
OBC- 430
SC- 2,582
ST- 10,515

Dr D Y Patil Medical College Hospital and Research Centre, Pune

19

6,04,200

SRM Medical College Hospital and Research Centre, Chennai


 

20

3,20,355

NEET UG: Fee difference

Candidates from historically-marginalised communities getting in through reservation are often blamed for diluting “merit” in medical education; that argument is seldom invoked in the case of private institutions admitting students who have lower NEET scores but more money. 

The National Medical Council issued new guidelines stating that private medical colleges and deemed universities must regulate the fee for 50 percent seats, making them at par with government medical colleges. 


Currently, fees in deemed universities are not regulated and those in private colleges are fixed by the state’s FRA for merit seats that are filled based on NEET ranks unlike management quota seats, admission to which depends almost entirely on the applicant’s capacity to pay. The NMC has recommended bringing deemed universities under FRA. However, these regulations will be implemented from the 2022-23 academic year.

College Name

NIRF Rank

NEET UG 2021 Cut-off

All India Institute of Medical Sciences Bhubaneswar

31

General- 817
EWS-2,196
OBC- 1,674
SC- 12,362
ST- 26,145

Medical College, Kolkata


 

32

Gen- 2,990
SC- 16, 086
ST- 34,512

Datta Meghe Medical College, Nagpur

34

6,17,862

Kalinga Institute of Medical Sciences, Bhubaneswar

36

1,56,696

SCB Medical College, Cuttack

39

Gen- 7,700
SC- 34,152
ST- 1,34,375

Dr. DY Patil Medical College, Navi Mumbai

41

5,70,414

NEET Exam: The exceptions

The bulk of the data shows that the NEET closing ranks are low when it comes to deemed universities; despite their being close to government medical colleges in the NIRF ranking, there are a few exceptions to this trend.

The details are mentioned in the below table:

College Name

NIRF Rank

NEET UG 2021 Cut-off

Lady Hardinge Medical College

22

General- 571
EWS- 1,466
OBC- 1,122
SC- 13,646
ST- 19,752

Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore

23

46,159

JSS Medical College, Mysore


 

24

64,322

Hamdard Institute of Medical Sciences and Research, New Delhi

25

28,217

Krishna Institute of Medical Sciences Deemed University, Karad, Maharashtra


 

42

4,07,199

KS Hegde Medical Academy, Karnataka

45

94,290

Mahatma Gandhi Medical College and Research Institute, Pondicherry

46

4,52,333

Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College, Karnataka


 

47

1,46,487

Shri BM Patil Medical College, Vijayapur

50

2,00,654

Conclusion

It is observed that the NEET rankings vary according to the colleges and NIRF rankings. The main problem with this is that the students with better ranks always prefer better colleges, whether it is government or private colleges. The infrastructure condition of government colleges is not on par with private medical colleges. So, the NIRF rankings depend on the quality of education, and many private colleges are better ranked than government colleges. The students choose government colleges only due to its lesser fee structure when compared to private colleges.

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