What It Takes to Become a Doctor

What it takes to become a doctor in India

The first filter is arithmetic, not effort

Close to 20 lakh students sat NEET UG 2026 and 11.21 lakh passed. India has 1,40,664 MBBS seats, so only about one passing student in eight gets a seat at all.

The course runs four and a half years

The MBBS course runs four and a half years before the internship starts. That is set by the Graduate Medical Education Regulations 2023, notified on 2 June 2023.

Then twelve months of rotating internship

A compulsory rotating internship of twelve months follows the final exam. Only once that year is done can a graduate register fully and work as a doctor.

The syllabus itself was rewritten in 2024

The National Medical Commission, which regulates medical education, published a new curriculum on 12 September 2024. Students are now marked on what they can do.

The second filter comes after the degree

About 2.73 lakh doctors registered for NEET PG 2026, the entrance exam for specialist training, against roughly 82,059 seats. That is about one in three.

Want to know what comes after the degree?

Our guide to courses after MBBS sets out the clinical and the non-clinical routes, what each one asks of you and where each one finally leads.