NEET Scores will be Valid for Three Years: MCI issues Gazette notification

New Delhi: Coming to the rescue of medical aspirants who wish to pursue their MBBS from abroad, the Medical Council of India Board of Governors recently came out with a gazette notification announcing that NEET scores will have validity of three years from now on.

To bring about the change, the Board of Governors in supersession of Medical Council of India with the previous sanction of the Central Government, has made the following amendments to the “Screening Test Regulations, 2002” namely:

In regulation 4 of the Screening Test Regulations, 2002, under heading “Eligibility Criteria” in Clause 4. 2(A), the following sentence shall be added after the existing provision:

Furthermore, the result of NEET shall be valid for a period of three (3) years from the date of declaration of result, entitling a candidate to pursue MBBS or equivalent medical course including pre-medical/language course, if any, followed by MBBS or equivalent medical course.

The gazette notification to this effect was issued 14th March, 2019, and the policy moves takes effect from the date of publication in the gazette

NEET (National Eligibility cum Entrance Test- Under  Graduate) is an entrance examination which is to be conducted by the National Testing Agency once a year for admission in MBBS/BDS course in all medical colleges acroos the country whether government and private except certain institutions including AIIMS and JIPMER.

The move is indeed going to benefit medical aspirants who are looking at outside shores to pursue their medical education

Last year, through another notification, the council had made had made NEET mandatory for even those candidates who wished to pursue their undergraduate medical education from abroad.The decision was taken to ensure that students of some academic standard study medicine in foreign universities.

Currently, NEET scores have a validity of only one year. However, this combined with the fact that its mandatory for foreign medical education, would imply that besides domestic, those students wanting to go abroad for MBBS would also have to appear for the exam again and again.