One of the most common points of confusion for first-time NEET-PG candidates is seeing the same specialty at the same institute show very different closing ranks depending on category. This isn't inconsistent data -- it's how reservation-based seat allocation is designed to work. Here's what's actually happening, with real numbers.
A real example: General Medicine, 2025 Round 3 (all-India)
| Category | Opening rank | Closing rank | Seats |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open / UR | 26 | 228,379 | 585 |
| OBC | 174 | 10,075 | 171 |
| EWS | 239 | 12,928 | 55 |
| SC | 1,385 | 27,067 | 98 |
| ST | 10,609 | 45,956 | 55 |
These figures are computed directly from MCC's own 2025 Round 3 allotment result PDF, aggregated by institute + specialty + allotted category, and are also what powers the College and Branch Predictor on this site.
Why Open's closing rank is so much higher
This is the part that trips people up: a higher closing rank for Open here doesn't mean Open is "easier." It's the opposite of what it looks like at first glance -- Open seats draw from every candidate regardless of category, which is a far larger and more competitive pool, and Open seats also make up the largest single share of total seats (585 of the roughly 984 General Medicine seats in this table). With more seats spread across a wider competitive pool, the seat that goes to the last (highest-ranked) Open candidate ends up much further down the merit list in absolute rank terms than the last SC or ST candidate in their much smaller, separately-ranked category pool.
The allotted category, not your own category, decides the cutoff
A closing rank always belongs to the category of the seat that was allotted, not the category the candidate registered under. An OBC candidate who is allotted an Open seat (because their rank was good enough to compete on the open list) counts toward the Open closing rank for that seat, not OBC's. This is exactly why NEET-PG Help's predictor always groups by allotted category -- mixing the two would produce a cutoff that doesn't match how MCC's own merit lists actually work.
One more layer: horizontal reservations like PwD
Categories like Open, OBC, EWS, SC and ST are vertical reservations. PwD is a separate, horizontal reservation that cuts across all of them with its own, much more relaxed rank cutoff -- and folding a PwD allotment into its base category's figures can badly distort that category's closing rank. We found and fixed exactly this issue in our own data; see how PwD allotments affect NEET PG closing ranks for the real before/after numbers.
Use this when reading any predictor's output
Whenever you check a cutoff -- here or anywhere else -- confirm which category it's labelled under and how many seats it's based on. A closing rank on 585 seats is a far more stable number than one based on a handful of seats, category-per-category.