How to Choose the Right Medical College in India?

By | Last updated on June 4th, 2018

choosing a right medical college india

So before I begin , let me just make it known that the college you want to see yourself in depends on a range of factors besides the fact itself that it is a ‘good’ college with a lot of patient inflow.

  1. Whether your rank in the NEET-UG entrance exam will help you make it till there (This is the main deciding factor and is the most realistic deciding factor of all).
  2. Whether you are comfortable in studying outside your hometown and sharing a room with others in a hostel.
  3. Whether you are okay with the fact that the city of your college may be too far from your home.
  4. Whether it is only the college that matters to you or there are other factors that you want to take into account as well.

The last point is the most important of all. For me , ‘other factors’ did matter a lot, thus I chose to remain in my city and even though I would have got chance of joining higher ranked governmental colleges outside my town.

First things first. The MBBS course isn’t a summer-internship camp or a conference week . Its a course of Four and a Half years! Add to that the years of your internship , post-graduation , etc. So, these five years won’t just consist of your studying all day and night. College life- endless possibilities of experience, but one goal.

So before you choose anything, make sure you are mentally comfortable with the life you are about to choose. One of my classmates completed both his semesters of the first MB course in a college outside my town, but so homesick was he that he actually got a fresh admission again in the first year into the college I am studying in along with our batch.

Another classmate went back home to Kota. He’ll wait for another year.

So make sure you are ready for this. I was not sure, so while prospecting the colleges I would include in my list, I excluded anything outside my state or 30 kilometers beyond my home.

It is extremely important to conduct a small research work before you fill your choices of desirable colleges after you are done with your entrances and get your rank. I did conduct a research, however the official sites of the respective colleges sometimes fail to provide the information you are looking for. So, do make sure you check out their pages on the social networking sites, talk to seniors who are already in those colleges, have a talk with professors associated with the MBBS course and collect information about the residential and transportation facilities that the stay will entail. Also, make sure you can afford the cost because though most government colleges do not charge you much, there are private colleges which have seats reserved for students coming in with their ranks in the entrances and though the fees for them are much more nominal than the students getting in through direct admission, it is definitely higher than that offered by government colleges.

Getting down to professional considerations:

  1. Rank of the college in India – Opinions may vary, as well as the rank they given by different organisations and sites, but medical colleges are mostly ranked on the basis of 3 things- how old it is (hence how well it is known to patients), the patient inflow and variety of cases and the number of seats available for the MBBS course.
  2. Availability of equipment – This is very important. You need to make sure that the college has adequate equipment (for example, instruments, lab requirements, cadavers, etc.) to cater to all the students. So in case you have to choose between two colleges closely spaced in their ranks, this should be one of the main deciding factors.
  3. Patient inflow – The number of patients is directly proportional to the number of types of cases you will get to witness. So a college with a hospital having more patients coming in definitely has more advantage (despite the chaos in the hospital grounds) because students get more hands on practical work to do.
  4. Faculty – This isn’t something you should be worried about. All colleges have more or less good and highly knowledgeable professors. In fact, it does happen that the same professor may take lecture classes in different medical colleges in the same city or nearabouts. So, a particular group of teachers does not remain confined to a single college only. However, that is not the case for private colleges, though since the pay is higher there, students do receive more care.
  5. Location – This should be looked at in two ways. One, whether the college is in your city or outside, something which has already been spoken about. Two, the location of the hospital itself, because it depends on the transportation to and availability of the hospital that patients will be rushed to it.

However, in the end , it is your rank that matters and one is actually left with very little choice. So, choose wisely, don’t obsess over some institutions only, the MBBS course is mainly of the academics, which is more or less at par everywhere. And, just like your school didn’t matter in the game deciding in which medical college you will land in, honestly, it is kind of the same here, where you do your post-graduation from matters more now. So try not to waste a year just to get into a prestigious instituion or do not break your heart over it if you can’t. Once you get admission into a medical college, consider yourself lucky that you have because it is a really tough competition.

All the very best !

 

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How to Choose the Right Medical College in India? was last modified: June 4th, 2018 by Bristi Majumdar

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