MHT-CET Medical Entrance: Preference form advice. Part-2.

1. DMER administers the admission process for all Health Science courses in all government colleges and some private colleges

       DMER is the government body that conducts the MHT-CET exam, and administers the admission process for all Health Science courses in the state of Maharashtra. Health Science includes a lot of courses from M.B.B.S. (Medical), B.D.S. (Dental), B.A.M.S. (Ayurved), B.H.M.S. (Homeopathy) to B.P.Th. (Physiotherapy), nursing and others. You can get admission to any of these courses, by putting it in your preference form. That is to say, you don't have to give separate preference forms for admission to, say medical and dental colleges - you will get a single preference form, and you can put in you preference for all the courses that you want to be considered for in the same form. NOTE that Health Science doesn't include Pharmacy. Admission to pharmacy courses is through your MHT-CET marks as well, but it has a separate admission procedure.

       DMER used to do this for government colleges only, but since 2011 it appears to be managing the admission process to some private colleges. The fee structure in government colleges is very reasonable, while education in private colleges can get very expensive. Government colleges also tend to attract the most talented students, which means one would have a better set of peers in government colleges. Till 2010, MHT-CET marks were valid for admission to government medical colleges only (private colleges used the ASSO-CET marks), but according to 2011 information booklet,  some private colleges appear to be accepting students through MHT-CET scores. There are private four medical colleges and two private dental colleges (and some others for the other health science courses) that seem to be using these marks. Does it mean that fee structure in these private colleges gets restrained? I don't know. You could call up DMER office, or these colleges themselves, to get this information. You'll get their numbers in the information booklet. The DMER office staff always seems to provide concise and updated information on the phone, though they may sometimes seem a little short and ill-tempered.

2. Maharashtra is divided into three regions.

       For the purpose of admission, DMER divides the state of Maharashtra into three regions. These are: Rest of Maharashtra (ROM), Vidarbha  (V) and Marathwada (M). Each of these regions has a certain number of colleges and a certain number for seats for each course. Of these, ROM (which includes Mumbai and Pune) has the highest number of seats for each course. 

       There is also a kind to protectionist tendency while allowing admission to aspirants in any of these regions. I mean, DMER seems to prefer that aspirants from a particular region pursue their further studies in that region itself. DMER does this by setting aside a large quota of seats in every region, for aspirants who have passed their 12th standard exam (HSC or equivalent) from that region. For example, an aspirant who has passed his 12th standard exam from a junior college in ROM region will be competing for 70% seats in ROM region, and 30% of the combined seats in the V and M region. This distinction becomes important when understanding your various merit list numbers, explained in the next section.

3. State Merit List number (SML) and Regional Merit number.

       Your MHT-CET marksheet will have a lot of information. The most important information in it will be your State Merit List no. (SML) and Regional Merit no. If you belong to any institutional categories (like SC, ST, OBC etc.) you will have two additional numbers called State Category Merit no. and Regional Category Merit no.

       I'll explain these with this example. Consider a candidate, from ROM region and belonging to the SC category, who has these numbers on his marksheet:

• State Merit List no. (SML)  1200.
• Regional Merit no.  500.
• State Category Merit no. 750.
• Regional Category Merit no. 250.

       

These number indicate that:

• Of all the aspirants in the state, he stands at the 1200th position.
• Of all the aspirants in ROM, he stands at the 500th position.
• Of all the SC aspirants in the state, he stands at the 750th position.
• Of all the SC aspirants in ROM, he stands at the 250th position.

       Your SML number is important while assessing your chances of securing admission to any course. Every year, right around admission time, DMER publishes the SML number of the last candidates who secured admission to each course, in each region, in each category. You will get this information in the information booklet as well. The same information, for two previous years is also available on the website. Studying these tables will give you a healthy measure of your chances of securing admission to any course. I'll explain this for our aspirant in the next two sections.

4. Splitting the numbers.
       For the year 2011, DMER is using MHT-CET for allotting admissions to 2370 seats for M.B.B.S., and 340 seats for B.D.S. There are seats for other health science courses, but I'll explain these two numbers. Of the 2370 seats for M.B.B.S. 2020 are in government colleges, and 250 are in private colleges. Similarly, of the 340 seats for B.D.S., 240 are in government colleges, and 100 are in a private college. I'll show how these numbers get further split up for M.B.B.S., but similar calculations can be made for any other course.
       Out of the total seats in any M.B.B.S. and B.D.S. college, 15% seats are set aside for candidates coming  with AI-PMT exam marks. (AI-PMT quota is present for M.B.B.S. and B.D.S. courses only.) So students with MHT-CET marks have about 2015 seat for M.B.B.S., and 289 seats for B.D.S. Out of the 2015 seats for M.B.B.S., 1241 are in ROM region, 391 are in V region and 383 are in M region.
       Next we need to consider the 70-30 split. A student from ROM ends up competing for 847 seats (70 % of  1210 seats) for M.B.B.S. in ROM region and about 232 seats (30% of seats in V+M) for M.B.B.S. in V and M regions. That is to say that an M.B.B.S. aspirant with MHT-CET marks from ROM region is competing for about 1079 seats. Similar calculations show that an M.B.B.S. aspirant from V is competing for about 752 seats, and one from M is competing for about 767. (The numbers will not add up exactly as I have changed decimal fractions to whole numbers.)
       There are further complications when one starts considering the reservations for females and other constitutional reservations, but I'll explain them later.

5. Assessing your chances for securing admission to any course.

       Before I begin explaining this procedure, I should stress one things. DO NOT use this to try to assess your "chance" of getting into a particular college, and use that to fill your preference form, in the order in which you have a good "chance" of securing admission. NEVER DO THAT! I'll explain why you shouldn't do that, in the next section, but always bear in mind that that THE PREFERENCE FORM SHOULD BE FILLED IN THE ORDER THAT YOU'D PREFER TO SECURE ADMISSION.
       I'll explain the method for assessing your chances for securing admission to a particular course or a particular college.

MHT-CET Medical Entrance: Preference form advice. Part-1.

Filling the preference form is possibly the second most important aspect of the entire admission procedure - the first most would be scoring good marks. However, there's a dearth of good advice about it online. You may find a lot of people offering counselling regarding this aspect alone, and indeed their advice is invaluable to medical aspirants. But all the information that the candidate needs is already present in the booklet 'Information Brochure of Preference System for admission to Health Science Courses', made available to all candidates who purchase the admission form. This booklet, along with loads of other important material, is also freely available off the DMER website (www.dmer.org/). A critical read of the entire booklet is advised for all candidates, well before filling the preference form. It is also best to seek advice from good counselors (you may end up paying some "fees", but it does help), and students who have (recently) been through the process.

I'll briefly explain the information you need to know before filling your preference form, however I should warn you that this is my personal advice, and I stress the importance of reading and understanding the information booklet yourself and keeping yourself updated with all the information on the DMER website, all throughout the admission process.