NEET Cutoff: What You Need to Know About Rank, Seats, and Admission Chances

When you hear NEET cutoff, the minimum score or rank needed to qualify for medical college admission in India. Also known as NEET qualifying rank, it’s not just a number—it’s the gatekeeper between your hard work and a medical seat. Every year, lakhs of students take NEET, but only a fraction clear the cutoff. And here’s the truth: the cutoff isn’t fixed. It changes based on how hard the paper was, how many students scored high, and how many seats are available in your category. If you’re aiming for a government college, you’re not just competing against your classmates—you’re competing with students from every state who scored higher than the state-specific cutoff.

There are two kinds of cutoffs you need to track: the NEET qualifying cutoff, the minimum score set by NTA to even be eligible for counseling, and the NEET admission cutoff, the actual rank needed to grab a seat in a specific college and branch. The qualifying cutoff is usually lower—around 50th percentile for general, 40th for OBC/SC/ST. But that doesn’t mean you’ll get into a college. For top government colleges like AIIMS or JIPMER, you often need to be in the top 1,000. Even for state medical colleges, a rank under 10,000 is often the bare minimum. And if you’re from a reserved category? Your cutoff rank will be higher than the general category, but the number of seats is limited, so competition inside your category is fierce.

What affects your cutoff? The paper’s difficulty, the number of applicants, and the number of seats. A tough paper? Cutoffs drop. More students scoring above 650? Cutoffs rise. And don’t forget state quotas—your home state’s cutoff can be very different from another state’s. If you’re from Himachal Pradesh, your state quota cutoff for a local college might be 550, but if you apply outside the state, you’ll need 600+ just to be in the running. Your category matters too. EWS, OBC, SC, ST—each has its own cutoff list. And if you’re an NRI or applying under the All India Quota? That’s a whole different ball game with separate cutoffs and fewer seats.

So what do you do if your rank is just below last year’s cutoff? Don’t panic. Cutoffs shift. Look at trends, not just one year. Check the last five years. See where your rank falls. Use that to guess your chances, not to predict your fate. And remember: cutoffs aren’t the whole story. Branch matters. College location matters. Your willingness to accept a lower-ranked college can open doors you didn’t think existed. The posts below break down real cases—what a 5000 rank can buy you, how coaching impacts your cutoff, and why some students with lower scores still get in. You’re not just chasing a number. You’re mapping a path. And this page gives you the map.