NEET UG past cutoffs (2018-2025): qualifying + MCC AIQ closing ranks

NTA-published qualifying score year-by-year, plus indicative MCC All India Quota closing ranks for top government medical colleges, AIIMS, and JIPMER. Use the trend to set a realistic 2026 target.

NEET UG has two cutoff layers worth tracking. The first is the NTA qualifying cutoff - the raw score floor that gets you ranked at all (50th percentile General, 40th percentile SC / ST / OBC). The second is the MCC AIQ closing AIR - the last All India Rank admitted to a specific college / course in MCC counselling.

What is the NEET UG qualifying cutoff each year?

Source: NTA public results pages, 2018-2025. The qualifying score is the raw mark equivalent of the 50th / 40th percentile each year - so it fluctuates with paper difficulty. Even very-high-difficulty years (2022 had a lower cutoff) still passed only the top half of the General cohort.

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What AIR closes which government MBBS college?

MCC All India Quota Round 1 / 2 closing AIRs for popular government medical colleges, General category. These are 15% AIQ seats only; state-quota closing ranks (85%) are handled separately by each state and tend to be more lenient for home-state candidates.

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Trend reading

• 2024 rebound: the General qualifying mark climbed back to 164 after the 2022 dip (paper was unusually easy).
• AIIMS Delhi: closing AIR for MBBS hovers under 60 every year - effectively requires being in the top 50 of all India.
• State quota matters: for tier-2 colleges, state-quota closing AIR is often 5-10× more lenient than AIQ. Domicile is a real advantage.

How to use cutoffs to set your 2026 target

1. Pick your 1st-choice college. Look up its 2024 AIQ / state-quota closing AIR.
2. Add a 10-20% safety buffer. Closing ranks drift each year as the candidate pool grows; aim for a tighter rank than last year's floor.
3. Practice authentic mocks.Your raw mock score, mapped to a recent year's NTA scale, is a reasonable predictor of your real percentile and AIR.
4. Track your trend over 10-15 mocks. Look at your trajectory: 480 → 530 → 570 across consecutive mocks projects roughly 600+ at the real exam.

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Qualifying cutoffs vs admission cutoffs

The single most important thing to understand about NEET cutoffs: there are two different numbers, and they answer two different questions. The qualifying cutoff (50th percentile General, 40th percentile reserved, 45th percentile PwD) decides whether NTA assigns you an All India Rank at all. It is the gate that lets you enter the counselling pool. The admission cutoff is the closing All India Rank (AIR) for a specific college and course after MCC or state counselling completes its rounds.

Qualifying is a low bar. The 50th-percentile General threshold has hovered around 120 to 165 raw marks across the last eight years, which corresponds to roughly 30 correct answers with no negative marking applied. Roughly 12 to 14 lakh candidates qualify each year out of the 20 to 24 lakh who write the exam. Almost any genuinely-prepared candidate clears this bar. The real rank competition begins after qualification.

Admission cutoffs are where the rank-fight happens. India has roughly 1.1 lakh MBBS seats across government and private medical colleges combined. Of those, government MBBS seats - the only realistically affordable option for most candidates - number around 56,000. With 13+ lakh qualifiers chasing 56,000 government MBBS seats, the effective acceptance rate for a government MBBS seat sits in the low-single-digit range. The admission cutoff therefore tracks the closing rank for the last seat filled, not any percentile threshold.

MCC All India Quota (15%) vs state quota (85%)

The seat-allocation split is the second concept worth internalising. Of the government MBBS / BDS seats in state-run colleges, 15% are pooled centrally as the All India Quota (AIQ) and allocated by the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC). The remaining 85% stay with the home state and are filled through that state's own counselling authority based on its domicile rules.

In practice this means a Maharashtra candidate competing for a Maharashtra MBBS seat through state quota faces a different (typically more lenient) closing AIR than a Maharashtra candidate competing for the same Maharashtra seat through AIQ. The state quota closing rank depends on how many in-state candidates from that state cleared the qualifying bar - which varies year to year. AIQ closing ranks are uniform across India because the pool is national.

Central institutions - AIIMS, JIPMER, BHU Faculty of Medical Sciences, AMU, ESIC, AFMC - run 100% on AIQ via MCC; there is no state-quota equivalent. Deemed universities and DGHS-administered seats also flow through MCC. State-quota counselling only applies to state government and state-quota private medical colleges within the state.

MCC counselling rounds: round 1, 2, mop-up, stray

MCC runs the AIQ counselling in four sequential rounds, each with its own opening, closing rank, and freeze / float / upgrade choices for candidates:

• Round 1:the tightest cutoffs. Top-rank candidates pick AIIMS / JIPMER / top-tier government MBBS seats. The closing AIR in Round 1 is the gold-standard reference for a college's "hardness" in a given year.
• Round 2: upgrades and freshly-vacated seats from Round 1 (top candidates accepting central institutions free up state government seats). Closing ranks loosen marginally, typically by 5 to 15% on the AIR for popular colleges.
• Mop-up round: for candidates who did not get a seat in rounds 1 and 2, plus seats vacated by withdrawals. Mop-up is open-rank - any qualifier can participate. Closing ranks at this stage can stretch significantly for lower-ranked colleges.
• Stray vacancy round: college-conducted (or institution-allotted) round for residual vacancies after mop-up. Closing ranks here are the loosest of the cycle. Stray-round allocations historically draw the most public scrutiny because of the wide rank delta.

State counselling follows a similar 3-to-4-round structure but with each state publishing its own schedule and round nomenclature. Most large states (UP, MP, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Rajasthan) complete state counselling in parallel with MCC rounds, with state mop-up typically running a week after MCC mop-up.

AIIMS rank ladder (indicative)

AIIMS Delhi has been the top-of-the-ladder for medical aspirants since the NEET-AIIMS merger in 2020. Across the 19 AIIMS institutions currently running MBBS programmes (Delhi, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Jodhpur, Patna, Raipur, Rishikesh, Mangalagiri, Kalyani, Nagpur, Gorakhpur, Bibinagar, Bathinda, Deoghar, Bilaspur, Rajkot, Guwahati, Madurai, Vijaypur), the rank ladder broadly tracks institutional age, urban proximity, and faculty depth.

As an indicative pattern: AIIMS Delhi typically closes its General-category AIQ MBBS seats within the top ~50 to 60 All India Ranks. The next tier of older AIIMS (Jodhpur, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Rishikesh, Patna, Raipur) typically closes within the top 300 to 800 AIRs depending on the year. The newer AIIMS institutions (set up after 2018) close in the top 1,500 to 3,500 AIR range. These bands shift year to year with paper difficulty, candidate distribution, and seat additions, so consult the latest MCC round-wise cutoffs for the cycle you are targeting rather than treating these as fixed thresholds.

How cutoffs move year to year

Three independent levers move NEET cutoffs:

• Paper difficulty: a harder paper drops raw marks across the board, lowering both the qualifying cutoff and the raw-mark equivalent at any given AIR. The AIR-to-college mapping stays broadly stable because everyone is solved on the same paper.
• Total candidates: the NEET UG pool has grown roughly 8 to 12% per year over the last five cycles. Steady seat additions have not kept pace. The net effect: AIR-to-college cutoffs tighten slowly each year, even if raw-mark cutoffs stay flat.
• Seat additions: NMC has approved new MBBS colleges and seat increases at existing institutions almost every year since 2020. Cumulative additions cushion the rank-tightening effect at the lower end of the ladder (newer state colleges) but rarely affect the top-tier AIIMS / JIPMER ranks.

The practical takeaway: do not anchor your target on a single previous-year closing rank. Look at the trend across 3 to 5 cycles and add a safety buffer of 10 to 20% on the AIR. A candidate who needs Round 1 admission at a specific college should aim for an AIR comfortably tighter than the historical three-year-average closing rank at that college.

AYUSH and Veterinary cutoffs

NEET UG is also the single entrance for BHMS, BAMS, BUMS, BSMS, and BNYS (collectively the AYUSH programmes) and for BVSc & AH (Veterinary). Closing cutoffs for AYUSH and Veterinary programmes are broadly lower than MBBS at equivalent-tier institutions, reflecting both the smaller candidate-preference pool and the seat-supply differences across these streams.

AYUSH counselling for the 15% AIQ pool is run by the AYUSH Admissions Central Counselling Committee (AACCC), separately from MCC. The 85% state AYUSH seats are allocated by each state's AYUSH directorate. Veterinary seats are filled through the Veterinary Council of India (VCI) counselling for the 15% AIQ pool, with state-quota seats handled by the relevant state veterinary university. Candidates aiming for AYUSH or Vet seats register through the same NEET UG application but participate in different counselling portals after the result.

Category and quota relaxations

Reservation category relaxations on admission cutoffs are substantial. Indicatively, SC / ST closing AIRs for a given government college typically run 3 to 6 times the General-category closing AIR at the same college. OBC-NCL closing AIRs sit between General and SC / ST. EWS closing ranks sit close to but marginally below General, reflecting the 10% EWS pool size. PwD horizontal reservation creates a further relaxation within each vertical category.

The exact multiplier varies by college, by year, and by round - there is no fixed rule. The MCC publishes round-wise opening and closing AIR by category for every college, accessible from the MCC results page after each round closes. Refer to those tables for category-specific targeting rather than estimating from General-category cutoffs alone.

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Notes & data sources

Qualifying score cutoffs are reproduced from NTA's official NEET UG result pages (2018-2025). MCC AIQ closing ranks are aggregated from publicly published Round 1 / 2 opening / closing rank PDFs. Closing ranks vary by round (Round 1 is tightest; later rounds + mop-up relax as upgrades free seats). For your specific category and home state, check the official MCC tables at mcc.nic.in and your state authority's counselling portal.