MBBS cutoffs in Maharashtra drop sharply as merit list announced
The CET Cell released the first merit list for 2025 on Thursday, showing the open-category cutoff for government medical colleges at 509 marks — down from 642 last year. In private unaided colleges, the cutoff dropped to 479 from 602.
The CET Cell is conducting admissions for 8,138 MBBS seats across 64 colleges in the state. Officials said the decline is evident in both government and private institutions.
While last year's higher cutoffs were partly due to an easier NEET paper, this year's exam — particularly its physics section — was considered more challenging. Experts noted that NEET's difficulty had been reduced during the COVID-19 years but has now reverted to pre-pandemic levels, depressing overall scores.
Parents' representative Sudha Shenoy welcomed the trend, saying it would allow more students to secure government seats. She credited timely approvals for medical colleges — completed before the first merit list for the first time — as a key factor.
'This clarity reduced uncertainty and helped bring cutoffs down,' she said, adding that in previous years, delays in approvals often pushed up the first-list benchmarks.
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Time of India
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