INDIA'S BEST medical, dental, AYUSH and pharma institutions

100 medical colleges, 50 dental and pharmaceutical institutions, leading AYUSH courses and colleges ranked

- Aeshwarya Tiwari

The number of MBBS seats in India has risen by as much as 26,117 in just three academic years, from 91,927 in 2022-23 to 1,18,044 seats in 2025-26. The country currently has 780 medical colleges, 427 government-run institutions with 59,728 seats and 352 private ones with 58,316 seats. In dentistry, there are 27,618 BDS seats available across 323 colleges, according to the Dental Council of India.

For this edition of ranking of MBBS programmes, we have ranked 70 publicly-funded institutions and 30 private institutions. In dentistry, we have ranked 25 public and 25 private institutions offering BDS programmes. The ranking methodology for this section is tried-and-tested and remains largely consistent with last year’s framework.

For undergraduate AYUSH courses, institute-specific data remains limited. Therefore, we have identified the most sought-after institutes for each major programme — BAMS (Ayurveda), BHMS (Homeopathy), BUMS (Unani), and BSMS (Siddha) — based on all-India cutoff ranks, determined by the lowest ranks on the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET UG) at which admissions were granted. This year, we have also highlighted the top state-level institutions for BUMS and BSMS programmes due to limited availability of all-India cutoff data in the first round of admissions.

In pharmacy, we have ranked 25 public and 25 private institutions. Pharmacy colleges have been ranked keeping both undergraduate (BPharma) and postgraduate programmes offered by prominent institutions in mind.

Assessment of institutes

During the initial stage of shortlisting, out of approximately 706 institutes offering MBBS, around 400 were selected based on their admission cutoffs and research records spanning the past three years (2022-2024). Similarly, for dental institutes, out of 323 institutes offering BDS, over 250 were shortlisted based on the same criteria.