Madras Medical College, College Of Pharmacy (inst. Code - 184), Chennai

The College of Pharmacy at Madras Medical College is one of only two government colleges in Tamil Nadu that teach B.Pharm, and its 60 seats are allotted by the state Selection Committee on Class 12 marks, not on an entrance test. In the first 2026 allotment, BC candidates were given its seats down to 189 out of 200 and SC candidates down to 185.5. Tuition is a few thousand rupees a year, and the M.Pharm seats above it are filled through a separate state entrance exam in which half of each branch is kept for B.Pharm graduates already in state government service.

The College of Pharmacy is a government pharmacy college inside the Madras Medical College (MMC) campus in Chennai, and it teaches B.Pharm and M.Pharm courses of The Tamil Nadu Dr. M.G.R. Medical University. The Selection Committee of the Directorate of Medical Education and Research, not the college, runs admission to both.

Its age depends on which milestone you count, and the college's own history page keeps them apart:

The 1835 date often quoted for Madras Medical College belongs to the parent institution. MMC's history page dates it to the Madras Medical School set up beside the General Hospital in 1835, which became a college in 1850. The AISHE directory, which lists the pharmacy college as a State Government institution affiliated to The Tamil Nadu Dr. M.G.R. Medical University, gives 1897 as its year of establishment, yet nothing on the pharmacy timeline happened in 1897. The one event MMC's history page places in that year is the building of the parent college's anatomy block, the "Red Fort". The only 1897 in either history therefore belongs to the parent college, and the AISHE year should not be read as the founding of pharmacy teaching or of this college. As a college in its own right, with its own principal, it dates from 2008.

The college's 2026 data return to the National Institutional Ranking Framework carries the institute ID IR-P-C-45416 and counts 244 B.Pharm and 75 M.Pharm students on its rolls.

The college runs four-year B.Pharm, a three-year lateral-entry B.Pharm for diploma holders, and M.Pharm in four branches. Its course table lists these seats a year:

The same table prints four years against every M.Pharm branch, but the Selection Committee's 2026-27 M.Pharm prospectus fixes the course at two years, and that is the figure to plan around. Ph.D. is not a live option: the 2026 NIRF return shows nobody enrolled for a doctorate, full-time or part-time, and the 2025 return records a single part-time Ph.D. graduate, in 2021-22.

What B.Pharm Costs

The 2026-27 B.Pharm prospectus sets tuition in every government college at Rs.3,000/- a year, against Rs.50,000/- a year in a self-financing college, which excludes hostel, transport and mess charges there. Students admitted under the disability category pay neither tuition nor special fee.

Tuition is only part of what a student pays when joining. MMC's fee sheet for 2025-2026 breaks down the B.Pharm and lateral-entry charges this way:

What M.Pharm Costs

M.Pharm tuition in government colleges is 5,000/- rupees a year under the 2026-27 M.Pharm prospectus, against 75,000/- for government-quota seats in self-financing colleges. MMC's 2025-2026 fee sheet prints an M.Pharmacy total of 16,197 rupees, with university registration fees of 6,422 as the largest single head. The individual heads printed beneath that total add up to noticeably less than it, so confirm the amount actually collected with the college office.

The larger commitment is the bond. The M.Pharm prospectus requires non-service candidates to sign a security bond of Rs.5,00,000/- undertaking to serve the Government of Tamil Nadu for at least two years if required, and service candidates to sign one for the same sum undertaking to serve until superannuation. Leaving a government college after the university's cutoff date costs Rs.1,50,000/- in discontinuation fees.

B.Pharm at this college is a Tamil Nadu counselling seat, and the whole process runs on the Selection Committee's portal. There is no application to the college itself.

B.Pharm Eligibility and Merit

The 2026-27 B.Pharm prospectus sets out who can apply and how they are ranked:

• Nativity: the candidate should be a native of Tamil Nadu. A student from another state who studied Class 6 to 12 in Tamil Nadu is considered under the open category.
• Age: 17 years completed by 31 December 2026.
• Subjects: a pass in Class 12 with English and either Physics, Chemistry and Biology, or Physics, Chemistry, Botany and Zoology, or Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics.
• Merit: marks reduced to a base of 200, adding the Biology percentage (or Botany and Zoology, or Mathematics) to the combined Physics and Chemistry percentage, after normalising marks from other boards against the State Board.
• Reservation: 31% open competition, 30% BC with 3.5% for BC Muslims inside it, 20% MBC and DNC, 18% SC with 16% of that for Arunthathiyars, and 1% ST, per the prospectus's method of selection.

The prospectus set the 2026 application fee at Rs. 500/-, waived for SC, SCA and ST candidates, and every candidate paid Rs. 250/- to enter counselling. Ex-servicemen's children have one reserved B.Pharm seat in government colleges and persons with benchmark disability have 5%, and these special categories are allotted before the general list.

Lateral Entry to the Second Year

Diploma in Pharmacy holders can join the second year. Under the 2026-27 lateral-entry prospectus, 10% of the seats above the sanctioned B.Pharm intake are earmarked for them, and the merit list is built from D.Pharm marks reduced to a base of 100. Madras Medical College and Madurai Medical College are the only two institutions listed as government colleges for it, and tuition is Rs. 3,000/- a year.

M.Pharm Entrance and Service Quota

The college's M.Pharm seats are filled through the Selection Committee's own offline entrance exam, held only in Chennai on 23.08.2026 for the 2026-27 session, and the M.Pharm prospectus does not use GPAT. The paper has 125 objective questions with no negative marking, scaled to 90, and up to 10 marks for experience complete the merit score out of 100. Applicants need 55% in B.Pharm, or 50% if they are SC, SCA or ST.

Half of the seats in each branch go to service candidates, meaning B.Pharm graduates in regular Tamil Nadu government posts under the medical education, public health, rural health or drugs control directorates, or approved probationers in local bodies, with two years completed by 31.03.2026, as the prospectus defines them. The 2026-27 provisional rank list ranks 1371 candidates, and the top total is 68.40.

The Selection Committee publishes every allotted candidate's mark, so the B.Pharm cutoff at this college can be read straight from the allotment list. In the round-one allotment of 03.09.2026, the college's first general-category admit held general rank 56 with 196.5, and the lowest marks among its allottees fell like this:

The list gives each allottee's community rather than the reservation compartment their seat came from, so these are the lowest marks per community, not official category closing marks. No candidate of the OC community appears among the round-one B.Pharm allottees at Madras Medical College. Round one covered only government seats in government colleges, and it opened to rank 20733 with a mark of 160.00, according to the round-one schedule.

These marks will move. The tentative round-two vacancy list of 13-09-2026 puts 17 of the college's B.Pharm seats back in play: 10 OC, 3 BC, 3 SC and 1 SCA. A registration extension notice moves round-two registration and choice locking to 16.09.2026, with results due on 18.09.2026.

There is no M.Pharm cutoff for 2026 yet. The M.Pharm round-one schedule sets the final result for 15-09-2026, so the allotment list with marks had not been published at the time of writing.

The most complete placement record for this college is in its NIRF data returns, which account for almost every B.Pharm graduate as either placed or admitted to further study, with jobs the larger share each year. The 2026 return and the 2025 return report:

In the 2026 return, the B.Pharm median fell to Rs 2,52,000 for the 2024-25 batch, the lowest in the four years, while the number going on to higher studies rose to 24. The M.Pharm median rose each year in the same returns. The returns do not name employers or split the placed count by sector.

The college's placement cell describes hospital training at Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital for both B.Pharm and M.Pharm students, M.Pharm internships at the Drug Testing Laboratory in Teynampet, and help for students seeking Junior Research Fellowships at IIT Madras and the Captain Srinivasa Murthy Central Ayurveda Research Institute. Its success-stories page points to GPAT and NIPER results and to state jobs such as Drug Inspector, Junior Analyst and MRB Pharmacist, without giving numbers.

The B.Pharm seat matrix is split by community before counselling starts. The Selection Committee's round-one vacancy position of 29-08-2026 shows the college's 60 seats as follows:

The M.Pharm matrix is published branch by branch. The M.Pharm vacancy position of 07-09-2026 shows 10 seats in each of the four branches here, and Pharmacology is offered at no other government college, since Madurai Medical College's 15-seat branches cover only Pharmaceutics, Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Pharmacognosy.

The college's own PCI disclosure on its college page shows how a real batch filled for 2023-2024: 15 MBC/DNC, 15 BC, 12 OC, 8 SC, 2 BCM, 2 SCA, 1 ST, 4 persons with disability and 1 student under the Prime Minister Special Scholarship for Kashmir students.

Rank 94 and a score of 42.34 is where MMC's pharmacy college stood in the 2025 NIRF pharmacy table. Its score has moved only between 40.93 in 2020 and 43.53 in 2023 since 2018, while other colleges overtook it, so the rank has fallen from 33 in 2017 to 94.

Research explains most of the gap. Of the five NIRF parameters in 2025, four sit in the fifties or sixties here (graduation outcomes 65.11, teaching and resources 59.47, outreach 54.35, perception 54.33), while research and professional practice scored just 2.02 out of 100. The research score was 15.54 in the 2017 table.

The college's 2026 NIRF return points to the reason that score stays low: 4 sponsored projects bringing in 44000 rupees in 2024-25, no consultancy income that year, and no Ph.D. scholars. The same return records 2 patents published and 2 granted in calendar year 2024.

Teaching is organised in four departments, the same four subjects as the M.Pharm branches. The college's department pages describe them this way:

• Pharmaceutical Chemistry: microwave-assisted green synthesis, computer-aided drug design and stability-indicating analytical methods, with an industrial microwave synthesis system and a drug design lab.
• Pharmaceutics: novel and targeted drug delivery, nanoformulations, quality by design and software-aided formulation.
• Pharmacology: animal toxicity studies, bioassays on isolated tissues and experimental pharmacology software.
• Pharmacognosy: extraction and characterisation of phytopharmaceuticals and standardisation of herbal drugs, headed by the principal.

Being on the MMC campus gives B.Pharm and M.Pharm students hospital training inside Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital rather than at an outside tie-up, and that is the facility the college's own pages lean on most. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the college made hand sanitiser and tunnel disinfectant for that hospital and the Chennai police, according to its success-stories page.

Each department keeps its own reference library and research dissertations, and students use MMC's central library, which has e-library access. The same page lists cricket, hockey, volleyball and badminton courts for pharmacy students. The college's 2026 NIRF return reports lifts or ramps and accessible toilets in more than 80% of its buildings, and records 61241 rupees spent on new laboratory equipment in 2024-25, down from 1659243 the year before.

The college has hosted the All India Pharmacy Quiz, which started as a Chennai-area contest in 2004-2005 and went national in 2011. Its 2012 edition drew 559 teams from nine states.

The B.Pharm prospectus marks hostel facility as available for the course. MMC's campus residences page describes one residence in detail, the Allied Health Science Graduate Student Men's Hostel on E.V.R. Periyar Salai, with 69 rooms in Block 1, 10 in Block 2 and around 250 occupants. The page does not say whether pharmacy students are placed there, and it describes no women's hostel, so women applicants should confirm accommodation with the college at admission.

The college's 2026 NIRF return lists 24 teachers, all but one on regular appointments, and most of the pharmacy teaching staff joined in September 2007, the year before the college became a separate entity. The list includes one professor, two associate professors, four teachers whose qualification is an M.D., and one contractual lecturer.

On the college page, Dr. R. Radha is named Principal and head of Pharmacognosy, and the teaching staff listed there are:

The success-stories section credits the teaching staff with more than 370 research articles, 36 patents filed and 10 books.

The college does not publish a list of distinguished graduates. Its success-stories page says former students have gone on to master's and doctoral study at Harvard University and the National University of Singapore, without naming them, and two of its current assistant professors describe themselves on the faculty page as MMC pharmacy alumni. The college's events list records a meet for its 1973 and 1974 batches in January 2024 and a visit that July from Mr. Sundar Kodiyalam, an alumnus based in the U.S.A.

The 2026 admission cycle for this college is running on the Selection Committee's notifications page rather than on the college's site. As of 13 September 2026, B.Pharm round-two registration and choice locking had been extended to 16.09.2026, and M.Pharm round-one allotment results were scheduled for 15-09-2026 in the M.Pharm counselling schedule. The college page itself carries its NIRF returns under the Nirf tab and the category-wise admission and result data under the PCI tab.

Madurai Medical College is the only other government college a Tamil Nadu B.Pharm applicant can choose, and both have 60 seats. In the round-one allotment of 03.09.2026, Madurai's first B.Pharm admit held general rank 10, against rank 56 here, yet its lowest BC allotment was 187 against 189 here and its lowest SC allotment was 183.5 against 185.5.

The college sits inside the Madras Medical College campus in central Chennai, and MMC's residences page gives the campus address as E.V.R. Periyar Salai, Chennai-600 003. The college page does not print a separate postal address or admissions phone line. Its committee listings give copmmc[at]gmail[dot]com as the college's email, and admission queries go to the Selection Committee at 162, E.V.R. Periyar High Road, Kilpauk, per the B.Pharm prospectus.

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