NEET 2021: What has been the trend in NEET cut-off scores, ranks over the years?

By Nidhi Agarwal and Priyam Dave

NEW DELHI: Since 2017, National Eligibility cum Entrance Test-Undergraduate or NEET (UG) has become the only entrance test for admission to medical colleges in India. The National Testing Agency has been conducting the NEET since 2019 and declares scores, national or all-India rank (AIR) and also ranks for each state.

Top-rank holders typically go to public institutions, but in 2020, central medical colleges that are not designated Institutions of National Importance (INI) admitted students at ranks much lower than in 2019. One explanation for this could be that many of the top rankers went to the INIs, including the All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER), that started admitting MBBS students via NEET in 2020.

Each state institution also “surrenders” 15% seats to the all-India quota (AIQ). Counselling -- the process by which a student is assigned a seat -- for the AIQ is conducted centrally by the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) of the Directorate General of Health Services. For the 85% state seats, each state has its own counselling authority. NEET 2021 is scheduled for September 12, 2021 and will be conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA) across the country.

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NEET UG: AIQ cut-off ranks

The counselling for allotment of seats is conducted by MCC for 100% seats of these centrally managed colleges. No state counselling committee is involved in the allotment of seats.

Given below are the ranks at which top-ranked medical colleges in central universities have admitted students over the past three years. AIIMS and JIPMER have been left out as they joined NEET in 2020 and Atal Bihari Vajpayee Institute of Medical Sciences and Dr RML Hospital, New Delhi, was established only in 2019.

Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College at Aligarh Muslim University does not have reservation.

All the ranks given below are from round-two. Typically the MCC holds a “mop up round” for a few colleges after this.

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Given below are the NEET UG ranks at which admission closed for candidates from the Scheduled Castes (SC). 15% seats in the all-India quota are reserved for SC candidates.

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A total of 7.5% seats in the AIQ are reserved for applicants from the Scheduled Tribes (ST). These were the ranks at which admission closed for ST students in 2020 before the mop-up round in NEET counselling.

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In the all-India quota, 27% of seats are reserved for the Other Backward Classes. These were the NEET ranks at which MBBS admissions closed for this group of applicants before the mop-up round.

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NEET Cut-off Scores: 2016-2020

The cut-off mark is the lowest score at which a student clears the NEET and is determined by the general performance of the candidates. It varies each year. For the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) category, there is only one year of NEET cut-off scores as the 10% EWS reservation was introduced in 2019.

This is how the cut-off marks have changed for different categories of applicants since NEET was partially implemented in 2016.

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