CMC Vellore MBBS admissions handpicked doctors who’d serve in India; NEET paper leak renews debate

CMC Vellore MBBS Admissions 2026: Before the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET UG) was thrust upon it, the Christian Medical College (CMC) Vellore had a system of admissions that didn’t rely on just one exam but a series of assessment that gauged academic merit but also aptitude for the medical profession and willingness to serve the public. The unique CMC Vellore MBBS admissions system is being discussed once again now, after yet another paper leak has derailed medical admissions this year.

As the union government scrambles to find a fix after the NEET UG 2026 paper-leak crisis – a re-NEET is scheduled for June 21 – opponents of the single-entry system have pointed to CMC Vellore’s as being more appropriate for medical education.

One of the top medical colleges in India, the private Christian-minority institute and hospital in Tamil Nadu, had fought for decades to preserve its unique admission process, which put as much emphasis on a candidate’s scholastic knowledge as on their suitability for the profession, especially in the context of India’s underserved masses.

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While the medical college cited the constitutional principle of minority institutes’ right to manage their own affairs in its long battle against the NEET exam, it also highlighted the success of its more holistic and mission-focused MBBS admission process against the narrow idea of merit evinced by the NEET framework.

CMC Vellore admissions fight predates NEET UG

CMC Vellore MBBS admissions 2026 will be based on NEET. But till the NEET exam replaced it, CMC Vellore had a unique admission process adopted in 1948. It fought for almost three decades to maintain it.

Before tangling with the centre, it had successfully resisted the Tamil Nadu government’s attempts, beginning in 1993, to bring the institute under the state’s centralised admission mechanism, assisted by a series of interim orders from the Supreme Court (SC).

With NEET, too, it managed to secure favourable judgments but only temporarily. In 2013, an apex court bench had sided with CMC Vellore and other petitioners in barring the erstwhile Medical Council of India (MCI) from conducting NEET. However, the decision was overturned in 2016.

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Christian Medical College Vellore continued to hold out against NEET till 2020 when the SC finally ruled that it had to join the NEET exam and counselling processes. Two years later, it instituted a new seat-sharing formula between the college and the state, where each would fill half the MBBS seats. Until then, CMC had allotted 84 out of 100 UG seats to candidates referred by churches around the country.

The state of Tamil Nadu opposes NEET as well and successive governments, including the newly-elected one, have taken that stance.

CMC Vellore admissions vs NEET UG

CMC Vellore’s was a two-tiered process. In the first phase, candidates sponsored by 53 Christian churches and church organisations, many of which run hospitals, would write an all-India entrance test. Then, some students from each state were called to CMC Vellore for an elaborate interview, involving a variety of tasks and interactions and held over several days.

These were aimed at assessing the candidates’ personality, character, communication skills, leadership qualities, suitability for medical education and willingness to serve rural communities. The activities, which ranged from solving a crossword puzzle to organising a small event, gauged everything from manual dexterity to teamwork abilities.

This exercise was assigned 30-40% of the weightage in the overall evaluation with the final selection conducted in a round-robin manner to ensure equal representation from different parts of the country.

CMC Vellore MBBS grads in rural areas

Sunil Chandy, part of CMC Vellore for 25 years and its director from 2012 to 2017, said this system of “distributed justice” was devised to ensure everyone had a shot at the selection. “This method ensures that a tribal boy from a rural school in Jharkhand, competing against a South Delhi boy from a top school, is also selected,” he said.

In court, CMC argued that its time-tested model produced doctors who stayed in the country and practised in its hinterland. A survey conducted in 1992 showed that around 80% of the college’s alumni worked in India for over 10 years after graduation, with the majority stationed in non-metropolitan areas.

“This evaluation remained the same, even during surveys conducted in 2002 and 2010, and is in striking contrast to similar surveys carried out by other medical institutions of equal standard, where only a small number of graduates have been working in non-metropolitan areas,” the 2013 SC order records CMC Vellore’s counsel as saying.

Chandy said this was a direct result of the institute’s admission process. “Someone who gets in by the present system of marks alone has no moral obligation to anybody. They would say they got in on their own merit and had five colleges to choose from, so the institute should be happy they joined it. And therefore, after they finish MBBS, their aim in life would be to write the USMLE [United States Medical Licensing Exam] and jump out of India because the conditions here are not favourable,” he said.

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Medicine requires ‘more than academics’

CMC supported its argument by pointing to its standing in medical education. Its counsel highlighted that CMC was rated among the top ten medical colleges in the country. “The excellence of patient care and academic training has been recognised, both at the national and international levels, and its contribution to health research has also been recognised as pioneering work by both national and international research funding agencies,” the counsel argued in the court.

SC’s 2013 order had endorsed this view, as CMC’s experience became a key ground in the apex court’s decision to cancel NEET.

“The practice of medicine entails something more than brilliance in academics, it requires a certain commitment to serve humanity. India has brilliant doctors of great merit, who are located mostly in urban areas and whose availability in a crisis is quite uncertain. What is required to provide health care to the general masses and particularly those in the rural areas, are committed physicians who are on hand to respond to a crisis situation,” said the court.

The centre argued that the institute’s reliance on churches for the first round of selection was against the concept of rewarding merit but the SC rejected it. The court observed that there was nothing on record to suggest that CMC and other minority institutes had indulged in any malpractice in matters of student admission.

NTA NEET UG favours ‘rich and urban’

Chandy maintained that NEET, now conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA), has not only failed in achieving its objective of bringing more equity and curbing corruption in medical admissions, it has made the situation worse instead.

“This national one bucket, strictly-by-merit concept that the courts in their wisdom approved, is only allowing the rich and urban to enter, and pushing out the distant and the marginalised from the competition,” he said.

He also pointed out that NEET has failed to check the soaring cost of medical education. “Capitation fees have become three times more distressing than what it was before NEET,” he said.

However, the biggest drawback for Chandy is what the exam does to aspirants and their education, trapping them in a cycle of NEET preparation, distracting them from the actual learning, whether in school or college.

“NEET is not one but three exams - one each at UG, PG and superspecialty level. “Because marks alone is the criterion, the students are no longer interested in going to the wards or seeing the patients, as they are busy going to coaching to prepare to crack NEET PG,” he said.

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Chandy advocates for a return to the decentralised system – not least because of NEET’s mammoth scale – and even scrapping the entrance tests altogether. “There will be corruption because NEET coaching centers are very, very powerful,” he said.

“Are we training doctors for the rest of the world? Or are we training them to serve our poor people who are in the villages, which are in an appalling state today. This is a fundamental question, a philosophical question, that the government must ask and be humble enough to say, ‘We made a mistake’,” he added.

The NEET UG 2026 was conducted on May 3 but has been cancelled due to a paper leak. The National Testing Agency is holding a re-exam on June 21, 2026.