NEET: Everything You Need to Know About the Medical Entrance Exam in India

When you’re aiming for a medical career in India, NEET, the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test, is the only gateway to MBBS and BDS programs across the country. Also known as National Medical Entrance Exam, it replaced over 40 separate state and college-level tests in 2016 to bring fairness and standardization to medical admissions. If you’re taking NEET, you’re not just competing with your classmates—you’re competing with nearly 2 million students nationwide. That’s why preparation isn’t optional. It’s the first step in your journey to becoming a doctor.

NEET isn’t just about memorizing biology formulas. It tests your understanding of physics, chemistry, and biology from Classes 11 and 12, with a heavy focus on NCERT content. The exam is multiple-choice, lasts three hours and twenty minutes, and is scored out of 720. Your rank, not your raw score, determines which college you get into. A score of 650 might land you in AIIMS Delhi one year, and a top 5000 rank might only get you a government seat in a smaller state college the next. That’s why knowing the NEET cutoff trends matters more than chasing perfect scores.

Many students turn to NEET coaching, structured programs designed to guide students through the vast syllabus, exam patterns, and time management strategies. Also known as medical entrance coaching, these institutes offer practice tests, doubt-clearing sessions, and access to past papers. But coaching isn’t magic—it’s a tool. The best coaching in India won’t help if you don’t build your own daily routine. What separates the toppers isn’t the institute they joined—it’s the consistency of their study habits, their ability to analyze mistakes, and how they use mock tests to improve. You’ll also need the right NEET syllabus, the official list of topics and subtopics covered in the exam, set by the NTA. Also known as NEET curriculum, it’s based entirely on CBSE’s Class 11 and 12 curriculum, so mastering NCERT textbooks isn’t optional—it’s the foundation. And while some students spend months on expensive books, the real key is practicing previous years’ papers and understanding how questions are framed.

NEET preparation isn’t about how many hours you sit at your desk. It’s about how smartly you use those hours. You don’t need to join ten coaching centers. You don’t need to buy ten books. You need to know what’s on the exam, practice it under timed conditions, and fix your weak spots before the real test. That’s what the posts below are built for—real advice from students who’ve been there, data on which coaching centers actually deliver results, and clear breakdowns of what you need to focus on to get a rank that matters.