NEET-UG age cap removal a booster for medical aspirants: Experts

The National Medical Commission (NMC)’s decision to remove the upper age limit for the pre-medical entrance test is set to benefit not only Indians vying for seats in the country but also aspirants of overseas education, say students and experts.
 

The NMC introduced the critical change in eligibility criteria last week for candidates planning to take the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test Undergraduate (NEET-UG) for MBBS, BDS and other medical courses in India.
 

While the decision was taken by the regulator at a meeting in October 2021, the NMC informed the National Testing Agency (NTA) — which conducts the qualifying test — recently as Mansukh Mandaviya, the Union minister of health and family welfare, made the announcement.
 

So far, there was an upper age limit of 25 years for general category and 30 years for reserved category students for NEET-UG, ever since the Central Board of Secondary Education placed the age cap in 2017.
 

However, students and other stakeholders then challenged the decision in the Supreme Court following which in 2018 the latter allowed candidates who were older than the eligibility limit to take the test on a provisional basis with their candidature being subject to the fate of pending petitions.
 

The NMC’s latest decision will come as a relief for such candidates, who would have missed the cut-off age in case the entrance test got delayed or postponed such as in 2020 and 2021. The number of such candidates could not be ascertained. NTA director general Dr Vineet Joshi could not be contacted despite repeated attempts.
 

Academics and medical experts say that the removal of the age cap for NEET-UG is in line with international practices.

“In relaxing the age norms for NEET, the government has signalled that it will never be late for an individual to pursue a career in medicine. This has been the practice internationally. We will now perhaps have a much desirable age diversity in our MBBS classrooms,” said Balasundaram Athreya, Business Head, Manipal Med­Ace, a digital learning and assessment re­s­ource for undergrad medical students.
 

Foreign students, on the other hand, believe that the decision will also influence those planning to pursue medical education overseas as they can now afford to take more time to prepare.
 

Shivangi Singh, a foreign medical student, pointed out that in medical programmes abroad, there are no upper age limits and “our peers are usually older than us”. “Due to the upper age limit, students in India were under pressure to prepare for NEET-UG often at the risk of underperforming in their board exams. Now they can drop a year after board exams to prepare better for NEET-UG, albeit amid rising competition,” added Singh, a third MBBS student at the Bogomolets National Medical University in Kyiv, who recently returned to India after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
 

According to latest estimates, while the number of NEET applications has risen from 1.33 million in 2018 to roughly 1.6 million in 2021, the number of MBBS seats available is just over 88,000.
 

Experts also point out that the changed rule would also imply an increased need for expansion of medical education infrastructure.
 

“The move also presents an opportunity to create a larger capacity. We need to increase the number of seats to accommodate a higher share of aspirants. We should not be creating unintended bottlenecks,” said Athreya.
 

Meanwhile, Dileep Mavalankar, director of the Indian Institute of Public Health, argues that the scrapping of age limit may not benefit a very large proportion of aspirants, but the increased competition could lead to better quality of doctors.