MBBS Abroad or Drop Year

MBBS abroad or drop year: the honest maths

The funnel this year, stated plainly

Close to 20 lakh candidates appeared for NEET UG 2026 and 11.21 lakh qualified, against 1,40,664 MBBS seats on NMC's matrix of 21 September 2026.

A government seat is one in seventeen

India's 1,40,664 MBBS seats include 64,121 in government colleges. That works out at roughly one government seat for every seventeen candidates who qualified this year.

A drop year costs a year, and only a year

There is no upper age limit for NEET UG and no cap on attempts, per NMC letters of 9 March 2022 and 13 January 2026. What a year does not change is the seat maths.

Your NEET result stays valid for three years

NMC treats the NEET result as the eligibility certificate for studying medicine abroad, and it holds for three years from the date the result is declared.

Abroad costs six years and close to a crore

Tuition across the six years in Europe runs from about EUR 60,000 to EUR 145,500, Cluj at the lower end and Charles University Prague at the upper end.

FMGE is the hurdle at the far end

FMGE has not cleared 26% since 2020. The rate ran 16.48% in 2020, 24.54% in 2021, 23.35% in 2022, 16.65% in 2023, 25.80% in 2024 and 23.94% in December 2025.

Want to know what six years abroad really costs?

Our six year cost guide breaks down tuition, dormitory rent and private rent, and what the total comes to in each of the countries we cover.