Why admissions will be tougher this year

CHENNAI: Admissions to medical schools in the state will get tougher as the last student to enter a state-run medical or dental college should have at least 50 marks more in NEET compared to a similar aspirant last year.

Minutes after the state released the rank list for admission to MBBS and BDS courses in state-run medical colleges and self-financing institutions affiliated to the state university, career consultants, teachers and parents pored over the data, compared it to the last year’s cut-off and concluded that better performance and lack of increase in seats will make admissions tougher.

State health minister C Vijaya Baskar said the selection committee received 28,067 applications from students for admission to government colleges. Among them, Keerthana K from Chennai topped the list with 676 marks, followed by Dharmapuri’s Raj Chendur Abishek R who secured 656 marks and Chennai’s Praveen R with 650 marks. While Keerthana’s score is 20 points higher than that of last year’s topper, Praveen has one mark less than his counterpart last year.

Admission to all medical and dental colleges is conducted by the state committee based on NEET 2018 marks and 69% rule of reservation.

“Eighty-one students scored above 550 in NEET in both 2017 and 2018. As of now, not many students did exceedingly well,” said educational consultant J P Gandhi. But there are 213 students who got 500 or more compared to 203 students last year. The gap then begins to widen as the scores go down. For instance there are 1,279 students above 400 compared to 1,466 last year and 4,791 above 300 compared to 2,569 last year.

“Here is where the competition gets tougher,” said Ritwika R, mother of an aspiring medical student. “I thought with a score of 350, my daughter may make it to government colleges. Looking at the list, I realised it could be tough,” she said.

While the state health department has not added any more seats to its own colleges, self-financing colleges, including Christian Medical College in Vellore, have surrendered up to 35% of seats to the government. When the counselling begins on July 1, the state will have 3,328 seats — 2,447 in state-run colleges, 127 seats in Rajah Muthiah Medical College, 65 seats in ESIC in KK Nagar and 668 seats in self-financing colleges under the state quota. In addition, it will admit students to 516 seats under the management quota.

“Despite this, the cut-off for students in the open category will go up to 415 in government colleges compared to 384 last year,” Gandhi said. “Every category will see at least a 50-mark difference in cut-offs. Those score below 200 may not get a medical seat in government colleges,” he said.