By Anish Kulkarni 

Self-Financed Quota

The last two years saw full Round 1 saturation for different reasons — 2024 was driven by cutoff inflation, while 2025 saw MCC repeatedly extend its counselling schedule, which created panic among candidates and pushed them to lock in seats early. This year, neither factor is at play. The number of qualifying candidates is down compared to last year, and several deemed colleges have also increased their fee structures — together, this has softened demand enough that ~300 of ~12,000 MBBS seats remain unallotted after Round 1. BDS continues to be fully allotted.

Some specific colleges illustrate this clearly: Sri Lakshmi Narayana Institute, Puducherry (120/250 filled), J R Medical College, Villupuram (77/200), Srinivasan Medical College, Samayapuram (178/225), and Shri Sathya Sai Medical College, Chennai (237/240) all have a meaningful number of open seats — in some cases, less than half the intake filled.
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NRI Quota
The NRI gap has a more specific driver this year: MCC has tightened NRI sponsorship rules, now restricting eligible sponsors to legal guardians only, a stricter definition than before. Fewer candidates qualify under these tightened norms, which explains much of the 83% unallotted figure (1,345 of 1,611 seats).

This isn't unprecedented, though. Last year (2025) also saw a change in the NRI framework — a priority system and revised sponsorship requirements were introduced, and only 433 students were accepted in NRI quota in Round 1. This year, that number is actually higher at 732 accepted, despite the stricter rules — so the pool of eligible candidates is still meaningfully engaging with the process. Last year, MCC relaxed the sponsorship rules in Round 2, and virtually all NRI seats got filled. Given the volume of vacant NRI seats this year, a similar relaxation and clearance in Round 2 is a reasonable expectation.

(The author of this article is founder & director of India’s leading educational consultancy firm, ASMI Career)