Parents tweet #NEET to protest application fees of medical colleges

As medical aspirants await the result of the National Eligibility and Entrance Test (NEET), private medical colleges are in the process of declaring their exhaustive admission processes, which involve a separate bout of application fees that range from anywhere between Rs 2,000 to Rs 5,000.

Furious parents have taken to Twitter and started the hashtag #NEET, to protest the same. They are tagging authorities from the field of medical education to ask them, ‘where is the transparency if deemed universities are free to charge application fees again?' While the private medical colleges are declaring fees for admissions, parents are questioning the point of having a common entrance test for all medical admissions, when they eventually have to pay another application fee.

After their struggle in getting the refund of registration fees paid for entrance tests at different private colleges, these parents of aspiring doctors are now dreading the exorbitant application fees.

The application fee for Pravara Institute of Medical Sciences in Loni is R5,000 while for Manipal University it is R600. Other colleges are yet to declare their process.

Deliberate fleecing
"If one private college is charging Rs 5,000 we would be shelling out almost R50-60,000 in only applying to colleges depending on the number of colleges we apply to. This is similar to what they had charged us to register for their individual entrance tests. Few of us have taken to Twitter again for this deliberate fleecing in any form possible," said Anju Meswani, a parent.

"There is no time to take the matter to authorities as already admissions are delayed to a great extent. We hope to take advantage of social media i.e. Twitter, to attract authorities' attention to this financial exploitation of parents. We are urging more parents to join in by re-tweeting," said Jayesh Shah, another parent.

This year's medical admissions have been a chaotic process and parents feel that the objective of having a common entrance test has not been achieved.

Mustafa Rangwala, a parent said, "Those who got admission through MH-CET had a smooth process as admissions were done through centralized process. Here we have to apply individually to each college. We are still struggling to get refund of the registration fee from colleges and now they have declared this new fee.