Guides & Tips
Why Medical Entrance Cut-Offs Keep Getting Lowered in India
28 Sept 2026
9 min read
In the last fourteen months, the qualifying percentile has been cut for NEET PG, NEET MDS and NEET SS. The reason is written into the rules, and it tells you something useful about how empty seats get filled.
Medical entrance cut-offs in India are lowered when seats would otherwise stay empty. The power sits in the regulations themselves, it is used by the Central Government for one academic year at a time, and in the fourteen months to September 2026 it was used on NEET PG, NEET MDS and NEET SS.
What does it mean when a medical entrance cut-off is lowered?
Medical entrance cut-offs are set as a percentile, not as a mark. The 50th percentile means you did as well as or better than half the candidates who sat the paper, and the mark that works out to changes every year with the difficulty of the paper.
Lowering the cut-off means moving that percentile down, usually part way through counselling. Everyone who was already qualified stays qualified. A new group of candidates becomes qualified, and they join the later rounds of counselling. Ranks do not change, and no one who had a seat loses it.
The important thing for a family to understand is when it happens. These reductions do not arrive with the result. They arrive weeks or months later, when the counselling authority can see how many seats are still unfilled.
Which medical entrance cut-offs were lowered recently?
Three, in fourteen months, across three different exams. Each was ordered by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and published by NBEMS.
Exam | Notice date | Original | Revised |
|---|---|---|---|
NEET MDS 2025 | 14 August 2025 | 50th percentile for General and EWS | Lowered by 19.863 percentile for every category |
NEET PG 2025 | 13 January 2026 | 50th percentile, which was 276 out of 800 | 7th percentile, which was 103 out of 800 |
NEET SS 2025 | 22 September 2026 | 50th percentile | 30th percentile |
The NEET PG 2025 figures repay a closer look. General and EWS fell from 276 marks to 103. General PwBD fell to 90. For SC, ST and OBC candidates the revised percentile was zero, and because a wrong answer costs a mark, the cut-off score worked out to minus 40 out of 800. The reduction was made for the third round of counselling, on a Ministry letter dated 9 January 2026, and the notice states there was no change to anyone's rank.
Why are medical entrance cut-offs lowered at all?
Because seats would otherwise go unfilled, and the government has said so in as many words. The clearest official statement is from 2017, when NEET PG cut-offs were cut by 7.5 percentile.
The Press Information Bureau release explains the mechanism and the reason together. Under Clause 9 sub-clause III of the Postgraduate Medical Education Regulations, 2000, "when sufficient number of candidates fail to secure minimum marks, the Central Government in consultation with MCI, may lower the minimum marks which shall be applicable for the said academic year only". And the trigger, in the release's own words: "Representations were received from some State Governments that seats in some categories may remain vacant as there are not sufficient number of candidates available." Around 9,000 additional candidates became eligible that year. The Press Information Bureau release of 24 May 2017 carries both quotes.
Three features of that provision explain everything that has happened since. The power belongs to the Central Government, not to NBEMS. It is exercised in consultation with the regulator. And it lasts for that academic year only, which is why it has to be done again the next year rather than becoming a permanent lower standard.
Does a lower cut-off mean the exam got easier?
No, and this is the most common misreading. A lowered percentile is not a statement about the paper. It is a statement about the number of candidates standing between the seats and the people who want them.
Two things can be true at once. The paper can be as hard as ever, and the qualifying line can fall to the 7th percentile, because the number of postgraduate seats has grown faster than the number of candidates clearing a 50th percentile bar. India had 86,360 postgraduate medical seats in the 2025-26 academic year, up sharply in recent years, and a seat that no one qualified takes is a seat that trains no doctor.
So a reduction is a supply signal, not a difficulty signal. It tells you the system had capacity left over, in that specialty or that category, in that year.
Has the NEET UG cut-off ever been lowered?
The undergraduate rules contain an equivalent power, and it works the same way: where not enough candidates in a category reach the minimum, the Central Government, in consultation with the National Medical Commission and the other regulators, may lower the minimum for that academic year only.
In practice it has been used far less at undergraduate level than at postgraduate level, and for a plain reason. NEET UG has around 20 lakh candidates chasing roughly 1.4 lakh MBBS seats, so there is never a shortage of qualified candidates. The postgraduate exams have a much smaller candidate pool spread across many specialties, and that is where seats actually go begging.
The practical takeaway for a NEET UG aspirant is blunt: do not plan around a reduction. At undergraduate level the queue behind you is too long for one to be needed.
What should you do if you missed the cut-off?
If you are a postgraduate candidate who fell short, the record says do not write the year off in the first week. Work through these in order.
Stay registered for counselling. Reductions are applied to later rounds, and you cannot benefit from one if you are not in the system when it lands.
Watch the NBEMS notice board, not social media. Every reduction is published there as a formal notice, with the Ministry letter number on it.
Check your own exam, not the news. NEET PG, NEET MDS and NEET SS are reduced separately, in different years, by different amounts.
Do not assume it will happen. Three reductions in fourteen months is a pattern, not a promise, and nothing obliges the Ministry to repeat it.
Plan the alternative in parallel. A year is long enough to prepare properly for the next attempt, or to look at postgraduate training abroad.
Our guide to counselling for NEET PG sets out the rounds you need to be registered for, the NEET PG 2026 result page carries this year's cut-offs, and PG courses after MBBS abroad covers the route outside India with its costs.
Conclusion
Medical entrance cut-offs in India are not fixed standards. They are the top of a queue, and when the queue is shorter than the number of seats, the rules allow the line to be moved down for that year.
Three reductions in fourteen months, across NEET MDS, NEET PG and NEET SS, tell you that postgraduate capacity is currently running ahead of the number of candidates clearing a 50th percentile bar. For a candidate just below the line that is genuinely good news, provided you stay registered long enough to be in the room when it happens.
What it is not is a reason to prepare less. The reduction arrives months later, it is never announced in advance, and in the years it does not come, the original line is the only one that counts.
Sources
Related Topics
- NEET PG
- Cut Off
- Counselling
- NEET MDS
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