Medical Admission: Over 1,000 Seats May Be Reduced

A proposal has been made to reduce over 1,000 seats in government and private medical colleges across the country for the 2025-26 academic year. The final decision on this matter will be taken at a meeting of the Health and Family Welfare Ministry scheduled at the secretariat next week.

Currently, there are 5,380 seats in 37 government medical colleges and 6,557 seats in 72 private medical colleges in the country.

A source from the Medical Admission Test Organising Committee informed that a proposal has been submitted to cut a total of 1,200 seats from government and private medical colleges. Of these, 600 seats are proposed to be reduced from government medical colleges and another 600 from private ones.

On condition of anonymity, a member of the admission test organising committee told The Daily Campus, "The previous Awami League government had set up medical colleges haphazardly just to show the people. These medical colleges lack quality education and capability. Therefore, a proposal has been made to reduce seats from such substandard and incapable medical colleges. If the proposal is approved, it will be implemented."

Meanwhile, a proposal has been made to reduce marks allocation for Chemistry and Physics in the medical-dental admission test and add those to General Knowledge and Human Qualities.

A source from the Medical-Dental Admission Test Organising Committee said that according to the new proposal, the MBBS and BDS admission tests will be held on the same day with the same question paper. Two proposals have been made regarding changes in marks distribution for the test. In one proposal, marks for Chemistry have been reduced by 5 to 20, and for Physics by 5 to 15. These 10 marks have been proposed to be added to General Knowledge and Human Qualities. In other words, this proposal suggests allocating 20 marks for General Knowledge and Human Qualities. Chemistry and English will remain at 30 and 15 marks respectively as before.

In another proposal for marks distribution change, only 5 marks have been proposed to be reduced from Physics and added to General Knowledge and Human Qualities. This means the test for General Knowledge and Human Qualities will be of 15 marks. Besides, Biology, Chemistry, and English will remain as before with 30, 25, and 15 marks respectively.

When contacted on this issue, Professor Saiful Islam, Chairman of the Bangladesh Medical and Dental Council (BM&DC), told The Daily Campus, "Proposals have been made to reduce 5 marks each from Chemistry and Physics or only 5 marks from Physics and add them to General Knowledge and Human Qualities. We have a meeting next week. The matter will be finalised at that meeting. Nothing can be said for sure before that."