Sdm College Of Dental Sciences Hospital Dharwad

SDM College of Dental Sciences and Hospital in Sattur, Dharwad, placed 25th in the NIRF 2025 dental table, and every one of its 100 BDS and 43 MDS seats is filled by the Karnataka Examinations Authority rather than by the college. That single fact decides most of what an applicant needs to know: the fee is a government-notified figure, the closing rank sits inside a state allotment list, and the seat you get depends on which of four KEA quotas you qualify for. The college shares a campus, a sponsor and a university with SDM College of Medical Sciences and Hospital, a separate institution, so check that any figure you find elsewhere belongs to the dental college.

The SDME Society of Ujire, headed by Dr D. Veerendra Heggade, founded the college in 1986 with 40 students taught inside the SDM Engineering College building in Dharwad, according to the college's own history. A six-chair dental hospital opened in town in 1987, and in 1989 the society bought 10 acres on the national highway between Dharwad and Hubli. Classes and clinics moved to that purpose-built campus in 1991, the year the Dental Council of India recognised the BDS, and in 1992 the undergraduate intake rose to 100 while MDS teaching began in all nine specialities.

The same history page closes with a list of future plans, and one of them was to seek deemed university status. That is not what happened. The college is now a unit of Shri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara University, which the university describes as a State Private University created by Karnataka Act No. 19 of 2018 and in force from 19th December 2018. The University Grants Commission's January 2021 letter, posted by the university, confirms it was set up by the state legislature as a private university and placed on the section 2(f) list.

Two early firsts still shape the college's identity. It opened what its history calls the country's first Department of Oral Implantology in 1993, and in January 2006 it began building an exclusive Department of Forensic Odontology, which the state recognised as a referral centre for forensic dental cases in October 2010, per the department page. Police-referred age estimation and bite mark work is handled there.

The college teaches the BDS, which runs four years plus a one-year compulsory rotating internship, the three-year MDS in nine specialities, and fellowships in implantology, cleft lip and palate surgery and forensic odontology alongside a digital dentistry certificate, per its BDS admission page and other courses page. Doctoral scholars also work in its departments, as the Faculty section below sets out from the college's NIRF filing.

BDS Fee

The yearly BDS fee depends entirely on the KEA quota a student is allotted to. The Karnataka Examinations Authority's college-wise BDS fee sheet for 2026-27, issued under Government Order MED 207 RGU 2026 dated 14-08-2026, sets four figures for Sri Dharmasthala Manjunatheswara Dental College, and the 2025 sheet gives the year before.

Reading the two sheets side by side, the government-quota fee stayed where it was while all three paying quotas rose, with the NRI and Others fees climbing fastest; the 2026-27 sheet also notes that its figures include university registration fees. Because the fee is charged for every year of study, a rise at admission is paid again in each later year.

SDM adds its own charge on top of the KEA figure. The principal's office has issued a separate yearly student amenity fee, itemised as skill lab, health care, accident insurance, library, sports, ID card, transport and vaccination charges, in a scanned amenity fee notice on the college site. That notice leaves out hostel and mess costs, which are covered under Hostel and Campus Life below.

MDS Fee

MDS fees vary far more by speciality than by college. The KEA provisional PG dental fee structure of 02-09-2026 lists the following yearly amounts for the college, and the same figures appear against each allotted candidate in the first-round MDS allotment list.

One line in that table runs backwards. A private-quota oral pathology seat is listed at Rs 1,80,000, less than the Rs 3,72,076 charged on the government seat in the same subject, and the allotment list shows a round-one candidate taking that seat at that fee. At the other end, a management seat in oral surgery or conservative dentistry costs almost six times the government-quota fee.

Every seat goes through KEA counselling on NEET merit, for both degrees and for all quotas. The university's BDS programme page lists the steps as qualifying NEET-UG, registering and entering options on the KEA portal, taking the KEA allotment, and then reporting to the college. For MDS, the college's admission page says centralised counselling for all categories of seat is held by KEA on the basis of NEET rank.

Applicants who expect a Delhi counselling round for SDM, as happens with Karnataka's deemed universities, will not find one. KEA's fee sheet files D337 under a joint "Private/Deemed University" heading, yet SDM University was created by a state Act, not deemed by the Centre, and KEA's own round-one list shows it filling even the NRI seats here.

BDS Eligibility

A BDS applicant needs at least 50% aggregate in physics, chemistry and biology with a pass in English at the 10+2 level, and must turn 17 by 31st December of the admission year, per the college's BDS page. The same page allows a 10% relaxation in that aggregate for SC and ST candidates and other government-notified categories.

Which quota you can enter depends on where you studied. KEA's UGNEET 2026 information bulletin reserves GMP seats in the private quota for Karnataka candidates, keeps OPN seats open to any Indian citizen on all-India NEET merit, and leaves "Others" seats open to every qualified candidate except NRI, PIO, OCI and foreign nationals. For a student from outside Karnataka without an NRI sponsor, the realistic routes into SDM are therefore the OPN seats and the Others seats.

MDS Eligibility

An MDS applicant needs a DCI-recognised BDS, a completed internship and permanent registration with a state dental council, and must qualify NEET-MDS for that year, per the university's MDS programme page. Options are then entered on the same KEA portal used for BDS.

The college does not publish closing ranks. KEA publishes every allotment instead, candidate by candidate, and the SDM rows can be read straight out of its lists. The table below covers round one only, which is the round where most seats are first taken; later rounds and stray vacancy rounds reach deeper into the rank list.

BDS Round-One Ranks

The ranks below are all-India NEET-UG ranks, taken from the SDM rows of KEA's 2026 first-round final dental allotment and its 2025 first-round final list.

The 2026 OPN row stands out. Its best-ranked allottee, at 91,586, held a better NEET rank than anyone admitted to SDM's government seats that round, and that candidate was only the sixth name in KEA's entire dental list. Government seats require Karnataka eligibility and OPN seats do not, so the likeliest reading is a well-ranked applicant from outside the state taking the Rs 5,51,950 private seat because the Rs 95,308 government seat was never open to them.

Do not compare the two years' ranks number for number. NEET-UG ranks shift with the size of each year's candidate pool, so a higher 2026 closing rank does not by itself mean the college became easier to enter.

Round one is also not the end, because some allottees never join: KEA's second-round provisional seat matrix, generated on 07-09-2026, put 23 SDM BDS seats back into play, 16 of them in the private quota.

MDS Round-One Ranks

For MDS, KEA's 2026 first-round final allotment placed 41 candidates at the college. The ranks below are NEET-MDS all-India ranks.

The four clinical specialities with the Rs 15,15,000 private fee drew government-quota candidates inside the top 400. Conservative dentistry is the sharpest case: a rank-371 candidate was allotted its private seat at Rs 15,15,000 a year, while the government seat in the same subject went to rank 377 at Rs 3,72,076, per the allotment list. Oral pathology and public health dentistry, by contrast, went to candidates ranked in the thousands on every seat type.

The college publishes no recruiter list or placement report of its own; the outcome figures come from the data it files with NIRF each year. Its 2026 submission, posted on its NIRF page, covers three BDS batches, and the 2025 submission on the NIRF site adds the batch of 2021-22.

Read the median with its sample. The Rs 7,60,000 for 2021-22 describes just 3 placed graduates, per the 2025 filing, so it says little. The steadier signal is higher study: in the 2026 filing, 55 of the 94 BDS graduates of 2024-25 went on to further study, more than took jobs, and together with the 39 placed that accounts for the whole batch.

The weak year is 2022-23, when only 70 of the 100 students admitted in 2018-19 graduated in the minimum time, according to the 2026 filing. Before paying for a five-year course, it is fair to ask the college why that batch fell behind.

The MDS median of Rs 10,80,000 for 2024-25 in the 2026 filing is the first above Rs 10 lakh in these returns and exactly double the 2022-23 figure. Against a private-quota MDS fee of Rs 15,15,000 a year in the four main clinical subjects, per the KEA fee structure, three years of tuition would take several years of that median salary to earn back.

The college splits its 100 BDS places as 40 government, 40 private, 15 NRI, PIO or OCI and 5 others, per its BDS admission page, and KEA's 2026 BDS seat matrix carries the same totals under code D337. That 40% government share is larger than the 35% government share KEA's information bulletin sets for dental seats at private non-minority colleges.

The NRI and Others quotas also appear to trade seats. KEA's 2026 round-one list shows 7 NRI allottees and 13 in the Others quota at SDM, against 15 and 5 in the matrix, which points to unclaimed NRI seats being released to the Others pool at the Rs 6,81,950 fee.

MDS Seats by Speciality

KEA's 2026 MDS seat matrix lists 43 places at the college. The table groups its columns into government seats, private seats (GMP, GMPH and OPN together), NRI and others.

The college's own MDS page gives a slightly different split of those 43, with 17 government, 15 private open, 4 management and 7 NRI or NRI-sponsored seats. The university's MDS programme page goes further and lists four seats each in oral medicine and oral pathology, which would push the total above the 43 that KEA allots. KEA's matrix is the one that allotment follows, so plan on its numbers.

SDM College of Dental Sciences and Hospital stood 25th in the NIRF 2025 dental ranking with a score of 56.49. The homepage's line calling it one of the top 10 dental colleges in India matches only one year of the table, 2021, when it came 9th.

The 2020 entry is listed under the name "Sri Dharmasthala Manjunatheswara College of Dharwad" with a different institute ID, IR-N-C-40531, but its data sheet shows a BDS intake of 100 and an MDS intake of 45, so it is the dental college. From 2021 the NIRF tables list it as IR-N-N-238. No 2026 NIRF dental table had been released as of September 2026.

Research explains most of the slide from 9th to 25th. Comparing the 2021 and 2025 parameter scores shows research and professional practice collapsing while teaching resources improved.

The research score fell in each of those years, through 26.85, 21.42 and 13.48 in the 2022, 2023 and 2024 tables. Perception has held up far better: the college's 63.77 in the 2025 table is well above the scores of the colleges ranked 24th, 26th and 27th that year, which were 44.80, 35.19 and 30.63.

Clinical volume is what the college leans on most. The homepage describes it as treating about 1,30,000 patients a year on a 23-acre campus. The outpatient register SDM discloses for the regulator on its NDC page shows 13,010 visits in April 2026, 13,988 in May and 13,146 in June. For NIRF, SDM entered 1,189 as its average OPD attendance for calendar year 2022 in the 2026 data sheet.

The patients page lists undergraduate clinics, postgraduate specialty clinics, a general dentistry clinic for comprehensive care, a Faculty Dental Practice where faculty treat patients with no students and at rates comparable to private practice in Hubli-Dharwad, and a Craniofacial Unit and Emergency Centre for out-of-hours trauma and bleeding. In-patient maxillofacial surgery goes back to 1992, when it began with 20 beds and a single operating room, per the college history.

For postgraduates interested in forensic work, the forensic odontology department is unusual. It teaches the subject within oral pathology in third year and oral medicine in fourth year of the BDS, runs a week-long elective for MDS students, and takes police casework. A one-year fellowship in forensic odontology open to BDS graduates was advertised for 2026 at a fee of Rs 35,000, per the college homepage.

The learning resource centre occupies 11,400 sq ft on the top floor, seats 350 and stays open from 9:00 am to 10:30 pm every day including Sundays, closing only for Ganesh Chaturthi and Balipadyami, per the library page. Spending on it fell in the latest return: the 2026 NIRF submission records Rs 66,17,586 on the library in 2024-25, down from Rs 90,86,025, while laboratory equipment spending rose to Rs 1,38,98,899.

Hostel and Campus Life

There are three hostels inside the campus, per the hostel page: Kumara for men and Kanya for women, each with 94 three-seater rooms with attached bathrooms and hot water, and Shraddha for women with single and double rooms. Room allotment is for one academic year at a time, and students may stay a maximum of five years from admission.

Meals are taken at the Satvika mess, where food costs are shared equally among students, according to the campus life page. The same page lists a 200 m track, football and cricket grounds, a swimming pool and courts for volleyball, basketball, kabaddi and throwball. The hostel rules require a mess advance of Rs 15,000, from which each month's bill is deducted, with a letter to parents once the balance drops below Rs 2,000; no room rent is posted on either page.

Every one of the 76 names on the faculty roster in SDM's NIRF data for 2026 is marked as a regular appointment, and by rank they break down into the principal plus 29 professors, 19 associate professors and 27 assistant professors. The 2025 submission recorded 82 faculty entries.

Two things in that roster matter to an applicant. The faculty has turned over heavily at the junior end: in the 2026 filing, 25 of the 76 teachers joined in 2022 or later, almost all as assistant professors. Doctorates are rare in the same list, with 4 teachers shown as MDS plus PhD, 70 with MDS alone and 2 with a BDS. One of those two BDS entries is Prof. Ashith B. Acharya, head of forensic odontology, a subject for which the department page notes the DCI curriculum has no MDS; he trained in forensic odontology at the University of Adelaide.

The principal, Dr Balaram Naik, completed his BDS in 1991 and MDS in conservative dentistry in 1994 at this college and is also Dean of the Faculty of Dental Sciences at the university, per the institution page. That page names Dr Harikesh P Rao as vice principal for administration and Dr Mahantesh Yeli for academics.

Funded research remains small. The 2026 filing shows 19 sponsored projects from 11 funding agencies in 2024-25, bringing in Rs 18,97,500, with 2 full-time and 10 part-time PhD scholars.

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