Medical College

Medical College, Kolkata was founded in 1835 and still teaches at 88 College Street, and the college many candidates search for as Calcutta Medical College runs at the scale that history implies: 250 sanctioned MBBS seats and a hospital of 2,218 beds. It sits 41st on the NIRF 2025 Medical list. The number that decides your application is not 250, though. West Bengal's counselling authority put 211 of those seats into the state pool for 2025, and 90 of them were unreserved.

Medical College, Kolkata is a West Bengal government college, and it teaches under The West Bengal University of Health Sciences, whose officers the college lists on its own university page. Its history page dates the founding to 28 January 1835, after the William Bentinck committee of 1833 recommended a medical college "for the education of the natives", and records that admissions opened on 20 February 1835 with twenty students selected through a preliminary examination. That page traces the lineage further back, to the Native Medical Institution founded on 21 June 1822 to teach medicine in the local language.

Two dates from the first decade still shape how the college describes itself. On 10 January 1836 Madhusudan Gupta, a student of the first batch, performed the dissection of a human body that West Bengal now marks as Medical Education Day. On 29 June 1883 Kadambini Ganguly became the first woman admitted here, and the government followed in 1884 with monthly scholarships of twenty rupees for women students, both per the college's history page.

The claim the college is best known for is one its own staff make in print. Writing in the Indian Journal of Surgery, surgeons from its department of surgery call it the first medical college of Asia, in Medical College Bengal, a Pioneer Over the Eras.

The MBBS is one course among many here, and the postgraduate register is where the college's size shows. Its own subject page puts the MBBS intake at 250 and then sets out the MD, MS, diploma and super-speciality seats discipline by discipline, with obstetrics and gynaecology, ophthalmology and general medicine carrying the deepest benches.

Below the degrees sit six clinical diplomas, in anaesthesia, obstetrics and gynaecology, otolaryngology, ophthalmology, orthopaedics and chest disease, with 20 seats each on the ophthalmology and the obstetrics and gynaecology diplomas. Under those runs a paramedical block, and the register gives every course in it a parent department: radiography to radiology, physiotherapy to physical medicine, perfusion technology to CTVS, cath-lab and ECG technique to cardiology, critical care technique to anaesthesiology, operation theatre technique to surgery, and optometry to RIO, which is not a department of the college at all but one of the two associated hospitals its bed register counts separately, on the same subject register.

On fees the college names two amounts, and both are what you pay to walk in rather than what a course costs. Its guideline for undergraduate admission routes the college fee through the State Bank of India collection portal and tells the candidate to enter ₹6,500 as the admission fee under the UG MBBS category, with tuition, hostel and library fees left at zero on that form, per the guideline for UG admission. For a super-speciality seat the charge at admission is ₹18,000, made up of a ₹2,000 admission fee, ₹10,000 of caution money and ₹6,000 of tuition for six months, payable online only, per the SS admission notice for 2025.

Neither figure is what an MBBS here costs end to end, and the college publishes no such total, so the binding number stays the one in the counselling notification for your cycle. How much of it the state absorbs is on record: 245 undergraduates have their tuition fee fully reimbursed from state and central government funds and another 54 from institutional funds, per the NIRF 2025 data submission.

NEET-UG is the only entrance paper for the MBBS here, and the college sets none of its own. Two authorities then divide the class between them. For the 2025 cycle the West Bengal Medical Counselling Committee held 211 of this college's seats in its own state pool, per the round 1 seat matrix, and it decides which category pool a rank is measured against. The seats outside that pool are counselled nationally by the Medical Counselling Committee, and that is the route a candidate from another state has to come through, because the state pool asks for West Bengal domicile papers at reporting.

What the college adds on top is a reporting process worth reading before you travel. Its undergraduate guideline requires you to appear in person at 88 College Street between 10 am and 3 pm with originals and one photocopy set, to have paid the college fee online beforehand, and to bring an execution bond typed and notarised on hundred-rupee stamp paper, along with four copies of the provisional allotment letter and eight passport photographs. Incomplete documents mean the admission is rejected, the guideline for UG admission states plainly.

Postgraduate entry runs on NEET-PG for the MD, MS and diploma seats. Super-speciality entry runs on NEET-SS, and the college's notice there is addressed specifically to candidates allotted a seat in the all-India counselling, who report to the students' section with their National Board result letter, MBBS mark sheets and internship certificate, per the SS admission notice.

No standing cutoff exists for this college, and none is published in advance, because a seat is settled by where the rank lists stop moving in each counselling round. What is published, and what changes the answer completely, is the pool you sit in. Of the 211 state-quota MBBS seats listed for 2025, 90 were unreserved, 44 were scheduled caste, 20 were economically weaker section, 20 were OBC-A, 14 were OBC-B and 12 were scheduled tribe, per the West Bengal UG counselling seat matrix for round 1. A 44-seat pool and a 12-seat pool do not close at the same rank, and neither closes where the All India Quota list does.

So the number you actually need is your own category's closing rank, in your quota, in the round you are sitting, and it exists only inside the round-wise allotment result that West Bengal's committee and the Medical Counselling Committee publish while the cycle is running. Read any borrowed figure against those pool sizes before you trust it. The matrix also splits six of the pools again for persons with disability, and four of those six come down to a single seat, per the round 1 seat matrix. A one-seat list has no closing rank anyone should generalise from, and a state-quota rank says nothing at all about the seats counselled from Delhi.

A medical degree does not end in a campus recruitment round, so the placement rows in the college's NIRF return count graduates who went into salaried posts rather than offers from visiting employers. Read that way, the placed count has moved inside a narrow band while the median has climbed each year.

The postgraduate cohorts report on much the same scale rather than a higher one, which is worth noticing at a college whose PG register is this large. Of the three-year programmes, 125 of 160 leavers were placed in 2023-24 on a median of ₹7,30,000, against 140 of 170 the year before on ₹7,10,000, in the same NIRF 2025 data submission. A further 32 and 30 respectively went on to more study.

Two documents together give the real seat picture. The college's NIRF return records the sanctioned intake by level, and the state counselling committee's notification splits the undergraduate seats by category before any round opens.

The seats outside that state pool are counselled by the Medical Counselling Committee rather than by West Bengal. On the postgraduate side the college's own super-speciality notice for 2025 speaks only to candidates already allotted a seat in the all-India rounds, per the SS admission notice, so the discipline-wise table further up is the college's standing register rather than a live matrix.

Rank 41 is the headline, and on its own it tells a candidate almost nothing. The parameter split underneath it does. Medical College, Kolkata scored 52.54 overall in the NIRF 2025 Medical ranking, and that total is made of five very unequal marks.

Graduation outcomes at 85.07 is the highest of the five and teaching at 69.46 the second. Research at 19.53 and perception at 34.84 are the two lowest, and both sit below outreach and inclusivity at 53.53. So the rank of 41 is carried by the teaching-and-outcomes half of the card rather than earned evenly across it, and a candidate should read it as a statement about how reliably this college gets a very large intake to the degree.

The faculty directory sorts staff by department, and the list runs from anatomy, physiology and forensic medicine through the clinical subjects into a long super-speciality tail: cardiology, neuro medicine, neurosurgery, nephrology, urology, endocrinology, medical and surgical gastroenterology, cardiothoracic and vascular surgery, paediatric surgery, plastic surgery, medical and surgical oncology, onco-pathology and nuclear medicine. IHTM and IHBT appear in it as institutes rather than departments, and they are where the haematology and transfusion work sits.

That tail is longer than the teaching register behind it, which is worth checking before you read a department name as a training place. Seven super-specialities carry a DM or an MCh seat on the subject register: cardiology, endocrinology, neurology, clinical haematology, plastic surgery, cardiothoracic and vascular surgery, and paediatric surgery. Urology, nephrology, neurosurgery, medical and surgical gastroenterology and the two oncology departments have staff in the directory and wards in the bed register, but no super-speciality seat attached to them.

Geriatric medicine is a department in its own right here, and the regional geriatric committee behind it draws in the heads of cardiology, respiratory medicine, orthopaedics, physical medicine, CTVS and radiology rather than sitting inside one specialty. A few clinical programmes get a page of their own on the college site rather than a line in a department list: the bone marrow transplant unit inside IHTM, functional since November 2016, a cochlear implant programme and heart transplantation. None of the three pages says when it was last updated, so ask the department what is running now before you treat any of it as a reason to pick the college.

The hospital is the facility. The college's NIRF return counts 2,218 beds, an average daily occupancy of 1,686 and average OPD attendance of 3,523 a day across calendar 2023, per the NIRF 2025 data submission. Those three numbers are what a clinical posting here draws on, and they are the strongest single argument the college has.

The beds are not in one building. The college's history page names the Eden Hospital of 1881-82, the Ezra Hospital of 1887, the Shyama Charan Laha Eye Hospital of 1891 and the Prince of Wales Surgical Block of 1911, alongside the Sir John Anderson casualty block, the David Hare block and the original Medical College and Hospital building, which stands on land Motilal Seal donated in May 1835, per the college's history page.

The bed register the college publishes, dated 14 February 2019, shows how the wards sit across those blocks, and it does not reconcile with the ranking figure. It counts 2,143 beds inside the college's own buildings and reaches a grand total of 2,668 only by adding two associated hospitals, RIO at 250 beds and LDV at 275, on the college's ward and bed register. The NIRF 2025 data submission filed six years later puts the hospital at 2,218. Its Super Speciality Block alone carries 302: urology 52, endocrine 40, neuro medicine 30, nephrology 30, geriatric medicine 30, neurosurgery 28, surgical gastroenterology 24, medical gastroenterology 20 and the rest in the anaesthesiology critical care and high dependency units. The older blocks kept their original work: obstetrics in Eden, ENT and psychiatry in Ezra, chest medicine in Shyama Charan Laha.

The library has its own claim on the record. Set up around 1839, the college calls it the oldest medical library in British India and puts its accession register at roughly 22,200 volumes, with national and international journals subscribed, on the library page.

On an estate of that age, accessibility comes back as a fraction rather than a place. The ranking form asks three questions. Medical College, Kolkata answers two of them with more than 80% of the buildings, once for lifts or ramps and once for specially designed toilets, and answers the third, on walking aids, wheelchairs and moving a student from one building to another, with an unqualified yes, per the NIRF 2025 data submission. Set that beside the bed register and the missing fraction gets likely names. The register counts nine separate blocks, and the college's history page dates three of them, Eden, Ezra and Shyama Charan Laha, to between 1881 and 1891. Which blocks fall outside the 80% is published nowhere. Put the question to the students' section ward by ward, because a clinical posting sends you to a ward and the wards are in different buildings.

Accommodation is administered by the college rather than arranged privately. It runs a standing hostel committee chaired by the Medical Superintendent cum Vice Principal, with the Dean of Students' Affairs and the heads of anatomy, neurosurgery, surgical gastroenterology and endocrinology sitting on it. What that committee does not publish is a hostel fee, a room count or an allotment schedule, and none of the three appears anywhere else on the college's pages.

The membership is the usable part of the page. It also seats the head clerk in charge of the students' section and a third-year postgraduate trainee, so the people who decide a room are named even where the rule is not written down. Ask them which hostel stands nearest the block you would be posted to, since the bed register puts the wards in nine different buildings.

Teaching is carried by 271 faculty members, the number the college entered in its NIRF 2025 return, and the doctoral bench under them is 21 full-time scholars deep, with 21 PhD candidates graduating in 2023-24, per the NIRF 2025 data submission.

Research is the one place that filing stops being impressive. The college entered eight sponsored projects from four funding agencies for 2023-24, on ₹2,50,00,000 received, in the same NIRF 2025 data submission. Eight projects is the whole bench behind a research parameter score of 19.53 in the NIRF 2025 Medical ranking. That is the trade on offer here. You get enormous clinical exposure, and very little funded investigation to attach yourself to while you get it.

The names attached to this college are the ones Indian medicine tells its own history through. Its history page lists Nilratan Sarkar, Upendranath Brahmachari, Bidhan Chandra Roy, the writer and physician Balaichand Mukhopadhyay and Ram Baran Jadab, alongside Madhusudan Gupta and the other named students of the first batch, Umacharan Seth, Rajkrishna De, Dwarakanath Gupta and Nabin Chandra Mitra. Brahmachari discovered urea stibamine for the treatment of kala-azar in 1922, and Roy was the second chief minister of West Bengal, as the college's own surgeons record in the Indian Journal of Surgery.

Kadambini Ganguly is the one entry the two sources disagree on. The history page dates her admission, as the first woman admitted here, to 29 June 1883. The surgeons writing in the Indian Journal of Surgery put it in 1884. Both dates are in print under the college's own name, one on its website and one under its department of surgery, so a candidate who quotes 29 June 1883 should at least know that the other version exists.

Four of the college's students were sent to England with Dwarkanath Tagore's money, and three of them, Gopal Chandra Seal, Dwarakanath Bose and Bholanath Bose, cleared the Member of the Royal College of Surgeons examination in 1846 and returned to India to join the Medical Service, on the same history page. The fourth stayed, took an MD at University College London, and became the first Indian to pass the examination for the Indian Medical Service.

The college's own notice board is not where an applicant should be watching. Its newest posting is dated January 2025 and the entries below it run back to 2019, mostly recruitment advertisements and walk-in interviews for laboratory and store posts. The circular and order pages carry no entries at all. Only the tender page is being kept up, and what it holds is quotation notices for software, display screens and refreshments.

What the college does publish for admissions it publishes as standalone documents on its download path: the guideline for UG admission and the SS admission notice are PDFs, not notice-board entries, and neither is linked from the notice page. During a counselling season the live source is the counselling authority, WBMCC for the state pool and the Medical Counselling Committee for the rest. Take the college's own documents as the authority on what to bring, and the counselling authority as the only authority on when.

Five state government colleges inside Kolkata fill MBBS seats off the same West Bengal list. Four of them sit within six seats of each other: Nilratan Sircar Medical College at 212, Medical College Kolkata at 211, Calcutta National Medical College at 208 and R.G. Kar Medical College at 206. The Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education and Research is well below that group at 170, per the round 1 seat matrix. Seat count is not what separates the first four.

The ranking does, and only two of the five appear on it. In the NIRF 2025 Medical ranking the Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education and Research is placed 23rd on 61.07 and Medical College, Kolkata 41st on 52.54, while Nilratan Sircar, R.G. Kar and Calcutta National do not appear in that table at all. Inside Kolkata, then, the choice is between one ranked institute, one ranked college and three unranked ones filling seats from the same list, and against an unranked neighbour the comparison has to be made on beds, seats and departments because there is no score to set beside it.

Against colleges outside West Bengal the register is the more useful measure. A 250-seat MBBS class sits on top of 187 three-year postgraduate seats and a 2,218-bed hospital, per the NIRF 2025 data submission. That volume is what a candidate here is choosing, and 211 of those seats need West Bengal domicile to reach, per the round 1 seat matrix.

The college and its hospital share one address in College Square, central Kolkata. Two telephone numbers are published and they are not interchangeable. The contact page gives a general line; every other page of the site carries the hospital's emergency number in its header and footer instead.

Admission queries for the current cycle go to the nodal officer for admissions named on the relevant notice. For the 2025 undergraduate round that office publishes an email, ss.mc.kol@gmail.com, and a WhatsApp number, 6295183047, in the guideline for UG admission.

At a glance

Quick facts