The Health Ministry of the country has recently in consultation with Medical Council of India (MCI), decided to reduce the minimum required percentile to qualify one of the popular medical entrance examination of the country i.e. National Eligibility Entrance Test. The decision is taken at present for the admission in PG Courses.

Medical Council of India (MCI) was struggling to fill all the seats of the participating college from last few years, to deal with the same the authority has planned to decrease the minimum cutoff by 6 percentile to fill approximately 2000 seats.

NEET 2019 was conducted on May 5, 2019 across the country for shortlisting eligible candidates, who seek admission in medical courses offered in various government as well as private college of the country. Mr. VK Paul, current chairman of MCI in his statement said that “The decision has been taken to fill 2000 vacant seats including all the colleges that were left after completion of second round of NEET Counselling. He also added that the similar measures were taken last year too.

Talking about last year, it is important to note that the last year cutoff was lowered by 15 percentile until the last counselling round. This year the authorities has taken a much calibrated approach by lowering the NEET Cutoff by just six percentile in order to maintain the quality of candidates selected.

After the announcement the total number of eligible candidates have obviously increased. Earlier only candidates with rank within 30, 000 were able to apply for the counselling process, which after the relaxation has increased 39, 000.

It is important to note that most of the vacant seats are in the branches of Microbiology, Anatomy, Pathology, Physiology, Forensic Medicine and others which one of the important streams of medical science.

After the revised cutoff, the minimum required percentage to qualify for counselling is also decreased. Now if a candidate is applying under general category, the required marks is 44. For candidates applying under reserved category of SC/ST and OBC the minimum required percentile for admission in medical courses of this academic year is 34. Candidates applying under disability quota needs to have minimum 39 percentile to qualify.

MCI has advised all the state counselling authorities to consider the revised cutoff before granting admission in MD and MS courses of respective colleges. Candidates who got requisite score can download their respective updated scorecards by visiting the official website nbe.edu.