National Eligibility cum Entrance Test for Super Speciality Courses(NEET SS)

About the exam

About NEET SS

NEET SS is the entrance exam for DM, MCh and DrNB super-speciality seats, and it is not one paper but 15. The MD, MS or DNB specialty a doctor holds, or will complete by the cut-off date, decides which of those papers can be taken and which seats a qualifying score can later be spent on. Its conducting body, the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences (NBEMS), has named 11 and 12 December 2026 as tentative dates for NEET SS 2026, and as of 15 September 2026 had not yet posted that cycle's information bulletin.

NEET SS draws its standing from Section 61(2) of the National Medical Commission Act, 2019, which NBEMS cites in describing the exam as the single prescribed route into DM, MCh and DrNB super-speciality courses, one that both settles eligibility and ranks candidates (NBEMS NEET-SS examination page). Any separate test run by a state or an institution for these seats is invalid, a rule the same NBEMS page dates to the Indian Medical Council (Amendment) Act, 2016, from the 2017 admission session onward.

Two bodies under the Union health ministry share the job, and a candidate deals with both. The exam, its marking and its result belong to NBEMS; the super-speciality seats themselves are handed out by the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) of the Directorate General of Health Services. The NEET SS 2025 bulletin says NBEMS has no role in counselling or seat allotment, treats a candidate's eligibility at the admit-card stage as purely provisional, and leaves document checks to the counselling or admission stage (NEET-SS 2025 Information Bulletin).

The year in the exam's name tracks the admission session rather than the date of the test. NEET SS 2024 was held on 29 and 30 March 2025 (NBEMS notice of 14 July 2025 on NEET-SS 2024). NEET SS 2025 was held on 26 and 27 December 2025, for the 2025-26 admission session (NBEMS result notice for NEET-SS 2025).

At a glance

NEET SS highlights

Calendar

Important dates

NBEMS's notice of 29 April 2026 lists 11 December 2026 (Friday) and 12 December 2026 (Saturday) as tentative dates for NEET SS 2026, with 31 January 2027 as the cut-off date for completing the feeder qualification (NBEMS updated tentative schedule of 29 April 2026). It labels the whole schedule purely tentative, with exact dates reserved for the bulletin. As of 15 September 2026, the NEET-SS page on the NBEMS site lists information bulletins for the 2025 and 2024 cycles only (NBEMS NEET-SS examination page).

Tentative NEET SS dates have moved before, as the 2025 edition's did in October 2025. A notice dated 16 October 2025 shifted NEET SS 2025 from its tentative 7 and 8 November slot to 27 and 28 December (NBEMS notice of 16 October 2025). NBEMS's notice of 22 October 2025 then replaced those with 26 and 27 December (NBEMS notice of 22 October 2025). The application form opened on 5 November 2025 at 03:00 PM (NBEMS notice inviting NEET-SS 2025 applications).

The bulletin's own timetable for NEET SS 2025 ran like this.

NBEMS declared the NEET SS 2025 result on 23 January 2026, inside the deadline the bulletin had given (NBEMS result notice for NEET-SS 2025).

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

For NEET SS 2025, an applicant needed a recognised MD, MS or DNB degree or Provisional Pass Certificate, or an equivalent recognised qualification, in a specialty listed as a feeder for the course sought, held or expected by 31 January 2026 (NEET-SS 2025 Information Bulletin). The degree did not have to be in hand on the day of applying, only by that cut-off, but a feeder result that lands after it does not count: such requests "shall be summarily rejected", in the bulletin's words. An MBBS on its own does not qualify: the bulletin's table of NBEMS examinations places the direct 6-year DrNB courses under NEET PG and excludes them from NEET SS.

Beyond the degree itself, the NEET SS 2025 bulletin attaches these conditions.

• Registration with the National Medical Commission or a State Medical Council is mandatory, and proof of it is checked at the test centre.
• A doctor who is not an Indian citizen, OCI cardholders among them, needs no NMC registration to sit the exam; if admitted, the doctor may get temporary NMC registration limited to that course and institution, provided the registering authority of the country that awarded the postgraduate degree has registered them.
• A candidate already pursuing or admitted to a DM, MCh or DrNB course through NEET SS cannot take a DrNB super-speciality seat through NEET SS 2025 for the full duration of that earlier course, even after resigning from it.
• An FCPS from the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Mumbai, is not equivalent to an MD or MS under a Ministry of Health letter of 30 April 2021, so it does not make a candidate eligible on its own (NEET-SS 2025 Information Bulletin).

The feeder annexures hold routes a candidate might not expect. Any MD, MS or DNB broad specialty is a feeder for DM/DrNB Medical Genetics; MD/DNB Biochemistry leads to Clinical Haematology; MD Tropical Medicine and MD/DNB Microbiology both lead to Infectious Disease; MD/DNB Radiation Oncology leads to Medical Oncology; and MS/DNB Otorhinolaryngology is a feeder for MCh Neurosurgery, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery and Surgical Oncology (NEET-SS 2025 Information Bulletin). Both 2025 annexures also list MS Traumatology and Surgery as a feeder for Neurosurgery, Vascular Surgery and Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. That degree had been let in for NEET SS 2024 only provisionally: an NBEMS notice of 19 February 2025 relayed a public notice from the National Medical Commission's postgraduate board admitting its holders for those three MCh courses, subject to the Postgraduate Medical Education Regulations, 2025 being approved and published in the Gazette of India (NBEMS notice on MS Traumatology and Surgery).

One inconsistency in the 2025 bulletin matters to surgeons. Its worked fee example has a General Surgery candidate paying for the Orthopaedics Group paper in order to apply for MCh Hand Surgery, yet both of its eligibility annexures list MS/DNB Orthopaedics as the only feeder for Hand Surgery. Both annexures close by tying prior entry qualifications to the Post Graduate Medical Education Regulations, 2023, as amended in 2025 (NEET-SS 2025 Information Bulletin).

Step by step

Application process and fee

Filing twice was a costly mistake for NEET SS 2025: the bulletin allowed one online form per candidate and let NBEMS honour only the form with the higher application number, cancelling any other along with its fee (NEET-SS 2025 Information Bulletin). The name entered when creating the user ID must match the postgraduate medical qualification certificate and cannot be edited later, so the bulletin tells anyone who mistyped it to create a fresh user. After that come the choice of question paper groups, the photograph, signature and thumb-impression uploads, the test city, the fee and a final preview, and the application counts as submitted only when the payment status reads "S".

The bulletin sets a single examination fee with no category-wise rate and charges it per paper, so the bill grows with every extra group chosen (NEET-SS 2025 Information Bulletin).

On top of the Rs 3,500 a group, a payment gateway may add its own charge, while GST does not apply under a Department of Revenue circular; no part of the fee comes back or rolls over to a later cycle, even for a candidate who misses the exam or is found ineligible (NEET-SS 2025 Information Bulletin). In the edit window, every field except name, nationality, email, mobile number and test city could be changed. Image defects that NBEMS flagged got one more chance in the selective edit window, and the bulletin states that no further opportunity follows it.

Before the exam

Admit card and exam day

The NEET SS 2025 bulletin scheduled admit cards to go live on the NBEMS website on 22 December 2025, ruled out sending them by post or email, and required a coloured printout at the centre (NEET-SS 2025 Information Bulletin). Alongside it, candidates had to carry the following.

• A photocopy of the doctor's permanent medical registration (State Medical Council, MCI or NMC), handed over at the centre and not returned.
• Proof of identity in its original, unexpired form, picked from a short government list (Aadhaar with photograph, passport, voter ID, driving licence or PAN card). Photocopies were refused, and so was an ID shown in DigiLocker, because electronic devices are not allowed inside.

The reporting counter closed 30 minutes before the test began, and reaching the venue gate in time did not count if the counter had shut (NEET-SS 2025 Information Bulletin). For the morning shift, entry opened at 07:00 AM and closed at 08:30 AM for a 09:00 AM start; the afternoon shift ran the same steps at 12:00 PM, 01:30 PM and 02:00 PM. Under the NEET SS 2025 bulletin, fingerprints were to be captured at registration in the venue, and photographs taken then, at every bio-break and during the paper; face ID may later be checked against them when the candidate is admitted to a DM, MCh or DrNB course. Anyone relying on a scribe or compensatory time under the RPwD Act, 2016 had two separate steps to complete: declare it in the application form, and raise a query with supporting documents on the NBEMS Communication Web Portal for prior approval, without which the bulletin keeps the scribe out of the centre.

Structure

Exam pattern

Whichever group a candidate chose, the NEET SS 2025 paper had the same frame: 150 multiple-choice questions, 150 minutes, and three sections, A, B and C, each locked to 50 questions and 50 minutes (NEET-SS 2025 Information Bulletin). A section cannot be revisited once its time runs out, and the next one starts on its own. The notice that applied these locked sections to NEET SS 2024 gives exam security as the reason, and ties them to an NBEMS decision of 4 May 2024 to add them to all its computer-based MCQ exams (NBEMS notice of 19 March 2025 on time-bound sections).

Marks run at 4 for a right answer, minus 1 for a wrong one and nothing for a blank, which in the bulletin's terms is 25% negative marking (NEET-SS 2025 Information Bulletin). A question marked for review is still scored on the answer given.

A candidate may sit every group paper for which the postgraduate degree is an eligible feeder, paying for each. Where a super specialty has several feeders, all of them sit the one group paper that covers it: Paediatrics candidates aiming at DM/DrNB Endocrinology take the Medical Group paper alongside General Medicine candidates, and General Surgery and ENT candidates both take the ENT Group paper for MCh Head and Neck Surgery. Qualifying in a group opens only those courses in it for which the candidate's own degree is a feeder, so an Emergency Medicine candidate who sits the Medical Group paper can choose only DM/DrNB Medical Genetics seats from it (NEET-SS 2025 Information Bulletin).

The 2025 timetable put the groups into morning and afternoon shifts on 26 and 27 December (NEET-SS 2025 Information Bulletin).

What to study

Syllabus

The NEET SS 2025 bulletin prints no topic-wise syllabus; it defines each paper by the specialty it draws on. It groups every DM, MCh and DrNB course offered into 15 question paper groups, each with one common paper (NEET-SS 2025 Information Bulletin). In 13 of the 15, the questions come from the general and sub-specialty components of the primary feeder broad specialty, all at the level of its postgraduate exit curriculum. The Critical Care Medicine and Medical Oncology papers are drawn exclusively from the topics of those two super specialties, a change NBEMS made for NEET SS 2024 on the National Medical Commission's direction (NBEMS notice of 11 October 2024 on the NEET-SS 2024 scheme). So the one-line syllabus summary printed beneath this section, which treats every group as a feeder broad-specialty paper, does not fit those two papers.

The groups, and the courses each paper feeds, are these.

The bulletin is not consistent about Critical Care Medicine. Its passage on multiple feeders says DM/DrNB Critical Care Medicine is covered in the Medical Group and, in the same breath, tells those feeder candidates to sit the Critical Care Medicine Group paper, which is how its group tables and exam timetable treat the course too (NEET-SS 2025 Information Bulletin).

How to prepare

Preparation and books

The only preparation aid in the NEET SS 2025 bulletin is a demo of the computer-based test on the NBEMS website, opened to applicants on 12 December 2025, the same date the bulletin set for telling them their test city; it recommends no books (NEET-SS 2025 Information Bulletin).

Where it is held

Exam centres

The NEET SS 2025 bulletin's tentative list of test cities ran from Guntur, Kurnool, Nandyal and Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh to Kolkata in West Bengal, and took in Srinagar, Imphal, Gangtok and Agartala among others (NEET-SS 2025 Information Bulletin). The form offered only cities with testing capacity left, handed out in order of arrival; NBEMS itself then fixed the building inside the chosen city and disclosed it on the admit card alone.

A candidate whose preferred state had no seats left could pick "OTHERS", in which case NBEMS would try the state of the correspondence address or a neighbouring one but could allot a centre anywhere in India. Choosing a different listed city instead fixed that city for good. The bulletin set 12 December 2025 for emailing each allotted test city, and ruled out any request to change a centre or city (NEET-SS 2025 Information Bulletin).

After the exam

Answer key

The NEET SS 2025 bulletin makes no provision for publishing an answer key: NBEMS says it will not entertain any request to share exam content, answer keys and answer sheets included (NEET-SS 2025 Information Bulletin). A candidate's one lever, in the bulletin, is to challenge a question for technical error. The bulletin allowed not more than 2 calendar days after the exam, which for NEET SS 2025 it spelled out as until 30 December 2025, and a challenge had to come with medical literature supporting it. Filing was open only to candidates who took the paper, through the NBEMS Communication Web Portal and from the email ID they had registered with; a complaint that a question was too hard did not count, and marked responses are never re-evaluated, rechecked or re-totalled.

The NEET SS 2025 result notice adds that subject experts went back over each paper once the exam was done, checking questions and keys for technical correctness, and that a question failing the check was awarded in full to every candidate, answered or skipped (NBEMS result notice for NEET-SS 2025).

Scores

Result and scorecard

The NEET SS 2025 result came out on 23 January 2026, but scorecards could be downloaded only from 2 February 2026, and the notice limits that download to 6 months (NBEMS result notice for NEET-SS 2025). Merit lists are drawn up separately for each question paper group, with no equating, scaling or normalisation: marks decide rank, and ties are broken in this order (NEET-SS 2025 Information Bulletin).

1. The candidate with fewer wrong answers across all three sections ranks higher.
2. If still level, fewer wrong answers in Section A decides it, and failing that Section B, and then Section C.
3. Next comes the aggregate percentage from all MBBS professional examinations, with the higher figure ranking first; Indian citizens and OCI cardholders with a foreign primary medical degree are compared on their FMGE percentage instead.
4. Last, age: the older candidate goes ahead.

That MBBS percentage is whatever the candidate typed into the form, cut down to two decimal places (NEET-SS 2025 Information Bulletin). The counselling or admitting authority checks it against original certificates at admission, and the result notice says a false figure that settled a tie costs the candidate the NEET SS 2025 candidature (NBEMS result notice for NEET-SS 2025). A NEET SS 2025 score serves the 2025-26 admission session alone, and the bulletin bars carrying it to a later one (NEET-SS 2025 Information Bulletin).

Scores you need

Cutoff

For NEET SS 2025, a candidate qualified by reaching the 50th percentile of their own question paper group, so the result notice gives a separate qualifying score, out of 600, for each group (NBEMS result notice for NEET-SS 2025). NBEMS's group bars for NEET SS 2024 (NBEMS group-specific qualifying cut-off scores for NEET-SS 2024) and NEET SS 2025 compare as follows.

A group's bar can move a long way between cycles. The Medical Group's fell from 299 for NEET SS 2024 (NBEMS group-specific qualifying cut-off scores for NEET-SS 2024) to 225 for NEET SS 2025 (NBEMS result notice for NEET-SS 2025). These scores decide who may enter counselling; seats are then allotted strictly on group-wise merit position (NEET-SS 2025 Information Bulletin).

The bar has also been relaxed after a result. For NEET SS 2024, a Ministry of Health letter of 10 July 2025 allowed every candidate who had sat the exam with an eligible MD, MS or DNB degree into the stray round of the NEET SS 2024 super-speciality counselling, with no change to anyone's group rank (NBEMS notice of 14 July 2025 on NEET-SS 2024).

Getting a seat

Counselling and seat allotment

MCC runs one common counselling for DM, MCh and DrNB super-speciality seats, and NBEMS does not take counselling or allotment queries (NEET-SS 2025 Information Bulletin). MCC's counselling scheme for NEET SS 2025 covers 100% of All India Quota seats, except in-service seats in Tamil Nadu, which it leaves to the state under a Supreme Court order, and states that under prevailing Supreme Court judgments there is presently no reservation in super-speciality courses (MCC Counselling Scheme for NEET-SS 2025). On the MCC Super Speciality Counselling page, the same document is posted under the title "Information Bulletin SS Counselling 2025".

The scheme allows only two rounds, citing a Supreme Court order in Ashish Ranjan and Others v Union of India, with Round 2 working as an upgradation round; its refund answer nonetheless speaks of a seat allotted in a "first, second or stray round". Registration costs a non-refundable Rs 5,000 plus a refundable security deposit of Rs 2 lakh, which is forfeited if an allotted seat is not joined (MCC Counselling Scheme for NEET-SS 2025). Whatever mobile number and email a candidate gave NBEMS become the ones MCC uses as well, which is why the NBEMS bulletin asks candidates to leave those details, and the name, untouched until counselling is over (NEET-SS 2025 Information Bulletin).

For NEET SS 2025, MCC's first schedule put Round 1 registration from 10 to 15 March 2026, the Round 1 result on 18 March and reporting from 19 to 25 March (MCC schedule for super-speciality counselling 2025). Round 2 did not keep to it. A notice of 24 April 2026 kept Round 2 choice filling open "till further orders", pending a Supreme Court case over Tamil Nadu's in-service seats (MCC notice of 24 April 2026, listed on MCC's super-speciality news and events page). After a Supreme Court order of 28 July 2026, Tamil Nadu's State Selection Committee reverted 153 vacant super-speciality seats to MCC, and they were added to the Round 2 seat matrix (MCC notice of 4 August 2026 on Tamil Nadu seats, listed on MCC's super-speciality current events page).

MCC's revised Round 2 schedule set the result for 13 August 2026 and reporting from 14 to 20 August (MCC Round 2 schedule of 5 August 2026). A notice of 20 August then extended Round 2 reporting to 06:00 PM on 21 August 2026 (MCC notice extending Round 2 reporting). NBEMS's own notice of 17 August 2026 called the delay in NEET SS 2025 counselling "unprecedented" and told its accredited institutions not to recover stipend already paid to Round 1 joiners who were upgraded in Round 2 (NBEMS notice of 17 August 2026 on stipend after upgradation). As of 15 September 2026, the Round 2 final result and that reporting extension are the newest NEET SS 2025 items on MCC's super-speciality page, and nothing about a further round of the 2025 counselling has been posted there (MCC Super Speciality Counselling page).

Candidates who had also been allotted an INI seat were given a separate window in early July 2026 to resign a Round 1 seat they had joined through MCC, on condition that they took no further part in MCC's NEET SS 2025 counselling (MCC notice for INI candidates, listed on MCC's super-speciality news and events page).

Where it is accepted

Participating institutes

NEET SS 2025 covered every DM and MCh course in the country, private medical colleges and deemed universities included, all DM and MCh courses at Armed Forces Medical Services institutions, and every DrNB super-speciality course except the direct 6-year DrNB courses (NEET-SS 2025 Information Bulletin). For DM and MCh admission in 2025-26, though, the same bulletin sets NEET SS aside at AIIMS New Delhi and at every other AIIMS running super-speciality programmes. Its exclusion list goes on to carve out Thiruvananthapuram's Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology, Bengaluru's NIMHANS, Puducherry's JIPMER and Chandigarh's PGIMER (NEET-SS 2025 Information Bulletin). A doctor aiming at those seats sits a different paper: the undertaking attached to MCC's notice for INI candidates describes a rank in the INI-SS entrance examination, conducted by AIIMS, for DM and MCh courses at AIIMS, PGIMER, JIPMER, NIMHANS and SCTIMST (MCC notice for INI candidates). The NBEMS NEET-SS web page is not consistent on the first name in that list: its English text reads only "AIIMS, New Delhi", while its Hindi text, like the bulletin, adds the other AIIMS (NBEMS NEET-SS examination page). With those institutes out, and Tamil Nadu's in-service seats counselled by the state rather than by MCC (MCC Counselling Scheme for NEET-SS 2025), the institutes summary printed beneath this section, with its seats "across India" and admission through MCC counselling, reads wider than the documents allow.

For seat numbers, the bulletin points to the National Medical Commission for tentative DM and MCh seats and to NBEMS for accredited DrNB seats, and says the final seat matrix appears only on the MCC website (NEET-SS 2025 Information Bulletin). The bulletin's feeder annexures, A and B, do not always agree on which award a course carries: Annexure A lists Paediatric Critical Care as DrNB only and Paediatric Cardiology as DM only, while Annexure B lists both as DM/DrNB. For the 2025 counselling, MCC's super-speciality page links a list of participating institute details (MCC Super Speciality Counselling page).

Get help

Contact

NBEMS and MCC answer different questions, and each publishes its own channels.

• For NEET SS 2025, NBEMS routed application, failed-payment and payment-gateway problems to +91-7996165333, a line the bulletin kept open from 09:30 AM to 06:00 PM between 5 November 2025 and 30 January 2026, and from 07:00 AM to 05:00 PM on 26 and 27 December 2025 (NEET-SS 2025 Information Bulletin).
• Eligibility, document and image queries go to the NBEMS Communication Web Portal, reached from the Contact Us tab of its website (NEET-SS 2025 Information Bulletin), and the NEET SS 2025 result notice adds the number 011-45593000 (NBEMS result notice for NEET-SS 2025).
• The bulletin names its helpline portals as the preferred channel and keeps post as the fallback, addressed to the Executive Director, NBEMS, at Medical Enclave, Ansari Nagar, New Delhi 110029 (NEET-SS 2025 Information Bulletin).
• Seat-allotment questions belong with MCC, whose call centre answers on 0120-4073500 and toll-free on 1800 102 7637 from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM, and whose adgme@nic.in address is kept for administrative matters (MCC contact details). For super-speciality counselling queries, the NBEMS bulletin gives MCC's address as mccsuperspeciality@gmail.com (NEET-SS 2025 Information Bulletin).

Source

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Disclaimer

Disclaimer

Exact exam dates, group/specialty mapping, qualifying percentiles/cutoffs, answer keys and results vary each cycle. Anything per-cycle here is stated for the cycle it names and is taken from the conducting body's own notification; confirm it on the official website before acting on it. Expertie does not conduct any exam, process applications or charge fees.

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