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

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:

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.

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:

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.