Wannabe medicos to turn journos

NEW DELHI: Afraid that the government won’t be able to deliver on its promise to maintain the current level of general seats, many MBBS hopefuls are thinking of abandoning their dreams of practising medicine, if they don’t make it to medical school this year. Instead, they are contemplating trying their luck with journalism, engineering, or just another regular science or humanities course.

With just about 27,000 seats in 244 undergraduate medical colleges across the country, and nearly 2 lakh students vying for these seats, it isn’t odd to find many of these aspiring medicos applying to non-medical courses. Next year when reservation goes up to 49.5%, there will be only 13,500 unreserved or general category seats.

That is, if the Oversight Committee is not able to effectively reconcile the implementation of the new quotas with the promised increase in seats which would keep the kitty at its current level of 20,925.
The government’s decision to reserve 27% of seats in central institutions seems to have made many aspiring medicos wary of giving medical education a second chance.

Sana Khan from Apeejay School has decided to pursue a journalism or English programme if she doesn’t make it to a medical college this year. “To avoid taking any risk, I will not take my medical entrance exam next year if I don’t make it this year. So am applying to LSR and other colleges,” says a visibly distressed Sana.

Increased competition for limited number of seats, and the fear of losing more than just an academic year, has forced many like Sana to consider options far removed from medicine. Consider this, at present about ten students compete for every seat in an undergraduate medical programme.

Competition would be much stiffer for a seat in the programme at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, where there are only 50 seats, or at the Maulana Azad Medical College which has only 180 seats. So, Deepika, another aspiring doctor from DPS, is certain that she will have no option but to abandon her dreams and apply for other courses.

Delhi University’s admissions close on June 15, and many of them are playing it safe by joining the beeline at the colleges for varied science and humanities courses. As in previous years, there are many who still plan to take a second try, and others want to move into a related area of study like biotechnology and chemistry.

“I thought of biotech only when reality hit me. I am keeping an option handy. Imagine this, of the 100 seats in Safdarjung Medical College, only 20 seats will be available general category students from Delhi, and some 20,000 are competing for these,” says Sumit Tomar from The Air Force School.

However, the number of these students applying for courses far removed from medicine such as nano-technology, electronics, mathematics and statistics seems to be on the rise. While some are even considering a switch with the options available varying from journalism to humanities programme to engineering.