The NIRF picture
According to the latest NIRF rankings, AIIMS Delhi holds the No. 1 spot in the medical category, followed by PGIMER Chandigarh and CMC Vellore. Rounding out the top tier are institutions like JIPMER Puducherry, SGPGIMS Lucknow, IMS-BHU (Banaras Hindu University) and KGMU (King George's Medical University, Lucknow) — all consistently featuring among India's most competitive government medical colleges.

How competitive is AIIMS Delhi specifically
AIIMS Delhi offers 132 MBBS seats — 125 for Indian nationals and 7 for foreign nationals — at tuition fees under ₹7,000 a year. Its NEET cutoff for the General category typically sits above the 99.999 percentile, and securing a seat generally means finishing within the top 50 All India Rank. Other AIIMS campuses are considerably more accessible by comparison, with closing ranks typically falling between AIR 500 and 5,000 depending on category and specific campus — AIIMS Jodhpur, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar and Rishikesh follow Delhi in competitiveness, while newer AIIMS campuses close at comparatively lower ranks.

What score you actually need
As a general rule, candidates need 650+ marks to remain in genuine contention for any AIIMS campus, and 680+ for the more established ones, with reserved-category cutoffs running roughly 30 to 80 marks lower depending on the specific institute. Outside AIIMS, government MBBS admission through the All India Quota typically requires 610 to 630+ marks for General category candidates, around 590+ for OBC, roughly 520+ for SC, and around 490-550+ for ST — though these figures shift slightly each year based on exam difficulty and the number of applicants.

Other top-ranked options beyond the big names
Beyond the institutions above, several other colleges regularly feature in NEET aspirants' shortlists once AIIMS Delhi is out of reach: Madras Medical College in Chennai, the Armed Forces Medical College in Pune, Maulana Azad Medical College in Delhi, and a cluster of well-regarded private and deemed universities including Christian Medical College Vellore, Manipal's KMC, and Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences.

A key distinction to keep in mind
NEET has two different cutoffs that aspirants often confuse: a qualifying cutoff, which is simply the minimum percentile needed to pass the exam and become eligible for counselling, and a much higher admission cutoff, which is what actually determines whether a candidate gets into a specific government MBBS college. Clearing NEET doesn't guarantee a government seat — the real competition begins at the counselling stage.

What to do after results
Once NEET 2026 results are declared, the process runs through checking your score and All India Rank, registering separately for All India Quota counselling and your home state's quota counselling, filling in college preferences based on realistic cutoff expectations, and going through multiple rounds of seat allotment before final admission and document verification. Since 2020, NEET has been the sole gateway to every medical college in India — government, private, deemed, and central institutions like AIIMS and JIPMER alike — with no separate entrance tests for any of them anymore.