The math is mostly simple: The cheaper the MBBS seat, the easier it is to get into.
The affordable seats are taken up by those well under AIR 100,000. But not in all states, says Ashok Hegde, founder, neet2seat.
The NEET-UG results are out and, soon, most families will be in deep counselling mode, comparing colleges, quotas and cutoffs in their family WhatsApp group. So, this is as good a moment as any for a thought experiment.
Suppose you score an All-India Rank (AIR) of 100,000. It’s not brilliant, but not bad either. It’s the kind of number a few thousand capable students will hold. How much would an MBBS seat cost you over the next four-and-a-half years? And, leaving aside the rank and the reservations, what is the one factor that would impact the cost most?
The cost ranges from Rs 10k a year to Rs 25 lakh a year. And what determines which of these you pay is the state you belong to.
Across the states we track at neet2seat, a general-category student at AIR 100,000 reaches a government college seat in only one -- Telangana -- where the last government college seat closes near AIR 180,000 and will cost you about 10k a year.
In all other states, government college seats run out well before a lakh.
In Maharashtra, they closed near AIR 48,000 in 2025; in Karnataka, around AIR 55,000; and in Andhra 60,000.
A student at AIR 100,000 has no choice but to turn to private medical colleges.
Closing ranks for a government quota, unreserved or open category seat, in a private college vary significantly across states and so does the price tag.
In Andhra Pradesh, the government-quota seat at the Anna Gowri Medical College costs about Rs 16,500 a year and closed around AIR 90,000.
In Uttar Pradesh, the government-quota seat at FH Medical College, Agra stays open down to rank 615,000, but costs Rs 17 lakh a year.
The math is mostly simple: The cheaper the seat, the easier it is to get into.
The affordable seats are taken up by those well under AIR 100,000. But not in all states.
Affordable seats: Telangana, then Madhya Pradesh
Two states stand apart for how far a cheap seat reaches.
Telangana is the standout. A government seat here costs about Rs 10,000 a year and closes at an AIR of around 180,000.
A Category A government quota seat at CMR Institute of Medical Sciences, a private college near Hyderabad, costs Rs 60,000 a year and closes around AIR 200,000.
A Telangana student can hold a genuinely affordable seat at a rank that, in most states, gets a seat that would cost 20x more.
Madhya Pradesh is the next kindest.
The government-quota seat at a private college like Mansarovar in Bhopal costs Rs 2.8 lakh a year.
Over the four-and-a-half-year course, that comes to roughly Rs 12.5 lakh, less than a single year's fee a student in Uttar Pradesh or Maharashtra would be paying.
The whole degree in Bhopal costs less than what it cost for a year’s medical study in Agra.
The spread of seats and fees
A look at how deep government college and government quota private seats go and what they cost in some of the states.
Fees are tuition and admission charges only; hostel, mess and living add a good chunk more. Gujarat's government figure is a GMERS college at Rs 3.75 lakh a year; its older pure-state colleges (BJ Ahmedabad, GMC Bhavnagar) cost about Rs 25,000 a year and close much tighter.
The ranks here are from Round 3, the last regular counselling round, for every college.
States run mop-up and stray rounds after it, where cutoffs close deeper still, but those fill only a handful of leftover seats, so they are not something to plan around.
What should you do with this information?
Two things, both of which you should do as early as possible.
First, never read a cutoff without reading the fee beside it. A rank you can reach at a college you can't pay for is not an option. For every college on your list, write the yearly fee next to the rank.
Second, if your rank sits in the middle, past every government college and into the dear private seats of your state, do the money maths early and honestly.
Your realistic choices are a paid seat that you must decide as a family if you can fund; or a switch to BDS, where ranks run much deeper and seats are more affordable than MBBS; or consider a second attempt as many do and try to get a better rank.
Settle it as a family, before a counselling round settles it for you.
Note: The figures here are from last year and should be used as a guide. A harder paper or a change in seats can move a cutoff by thousands of ranks in a season.
Ashok Hegde runs neet2seat.com, which tracks NEET-UG cut-offs, fees and counselling rules across 23 states and the All India Quota.
