INI CET

It is the combined entrance test for postgraduate medical and dental courses at the Institutes of National Importance, including the AIIMS institutions. Candidates are typically MBBS or BDS graduates competing for a small number of residency seats. Confirm the current eligibility rules, qualifying degree requirements and internship conditions on the official AIIMS New Delhi website before applying.

It is a single-session, computer-based examination made up entirely of multiple-choice questions, with one correct option per question. Questions are drawn from the full MBBS curriculum rather than a narrow syllabus. The exact number of questions, marking scheme and negative-marking rules are set per session, so check the official information brochure for your year rather than relying on older accounts.

Clinical subjects - Medicine, Surgery, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Paediatrics and allied specialties - form the largest block, with para-clinical and pre-clinical subjects sharing the remainder. In practice this means clinical revision should dominate your schedule, while Anatomy, Physiology, Biochemistry, Pathology, Pharmacology, Microbiology, Forensic Medicine and Community Medicine are maintained through regular short revision cycles.

Competition is intense because seats are few relative to applicants, and the paper tests applied clinical reasoning as well as recall. There is no fixed published cut-off that applies across sessions; qualifying and ranking thresholds depend on the session and are announced with the results. Aim to maximise accuracy rather than chase a specific number, and verify any cut-off claim against official sources.

Attempt limits and eligibility windows are governed by the current session's rules and by the number of permitted attempts tied to your qualifying degree and internship completion. These conditions change between sessions, so treat any figure you hear from seniors as provisional and confirm the retake and attempt policy in the official brochure before planning a repeat attempt.

Start with clinical subjects, since they carry the most marks and take longest to master, and build a parallel revision loop for pre-clinical and para-clinical topics. Read standard textbooks once for understanding, then shift to question practice with timed blocks. Reserve the final weeks for rapid revision of high-yield notes and for reviewing your own error log rather than starting new material.

Three recur. First, over-investing in pre-clinical minutiae while clinical topics stay shallow. Second, practising untimed, which hides the pacing problem that sinks candidates in the real exam. Third, skipping post-test review, so the same conceptual errors repeat. A fourth is relying on outdated pattern information instead of the current session's official brochure.

Treat the paper as a pacing exercise: move through questions you know quickly, flag uncertain ones, and return to them only after the straightforward pass is complete. Practise with full-length timed mocks so your internal clock matches the real session length, and rehearse a rule for when to guess versus leave a question, based on the negative-marking rule in force that year.

Only on the official AIIMS New Delhi website and the official examination brochure for the relevant session. Dates, application fees, question counts, timing and counselling procedure are revised between sessions, and this independent study page does not reproduce them. Verify everything there before you apply, pay or plan travel.