Becoming a Doctor

How does one become a doctor?

The first step to becoming a doctor is to get admission into a good MBBS course, after class XII, where you should have taken science stream with Physics, Chemistry and Biology. The MBBS course is tough to qualify for and requires four and a half years of rigorous study followed by a year of rotating internship, wherein you shall work for short spells in different departments of a hospital- surgery, gynecology, medicines, paediatrics and so on; so that you get a working knowledge of what these fields are all about.

Since there are only about 20,000 seats available in medical colleges in India every year, of these only about a thousand are in the country’s ‘top rated’ colleges, medical entrance exams are very competitive. The entrance exams to post graduate medical courses, the ones that doctors take when they finish their MBBS and want to specialize, are even more competitive as there are even fewer seats available

Another way to get into these courses is to pay for a seat, this involves fairly large amounts of money and even when you are in it is required of you to pass all your exams in order to earn your degree.

Different entrance exams:
# The All-India Pre-Medical Test (PMT) conducted by CBSE is a route to admission in about 90 Medical colleges in Indian run by the Union governemtn, state governments and municipal authorities (except for a few like AIIMS and AFMC, which have their own entrance exams). In these colleges , 15% of the seats are reserved for applicants who have been successful in this exam (they also have to be from outside the state in which a particular college is located in order to gain admission there). Approximately 2000 ranks are awarded and the allocation of colleges is based on a students rank. The exam tests students in Physics, Chemistry and Biology and is annually held in April to end of early May.
# The state level entrance test for admission to both government and private medical colleges in he state where you live. Most states have their own entrance tests, and you are usually eligible to take the test only if you are domicile in that state. State level medical entrance exams are usually held in March to April.
# Entrance exams are also conducted by top tanking medical colleges such as the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi, the Armed Forces Medical college (AFMC), Pune, JIPMER, Pondicherry, PGI, Chandigarh and CMC, Vellore. All these exmas are normally held in the months of May and June, and require a 50% aggregate in Biology, Physics and Chemistry in XII as eligibility. While these exams are largely based on what you study in XII, there is no telling what can be asked (as some do not have a fixed syllabus). As a result many students take supplementary coaching.

There is no ‘best’ way to prepare for these entrance exams. But we urge you to start planning for them when you are in XI or XII standard, by consulting with your teachers, seniors or any other experts/counselors in this field.

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