Indian medical aspirants encounter the main difficulty of getting admitted in a good college due to paucity of medical seats in India. Currently, for more than one million aspiring doctors there are only around 100,000 medical seats in India. (In 2021, a record 1.5 million candidates appeared for NEET-UG exam). Limited students are able to clear tough entrance exams for government universities, while others look for possibilities in private medical schools in India where they find it hard to pay exorbitant tuition fees and donations, if at all they get an offer in the first place. Under such challenging circumstances in their home country, foreign medical universities become a viable alternative for Indian students. The medical schools in several countries offer MD (equivalent to MBBS in India) and other medical programs at an affordable cost. Russia, Philippines, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Poland, Georgia, Bangladesh are some good destinations offering quality medical programs with affordable tuition and living expenses.

To attain admission abroad for MBBS, the applicant must have cleared NEET with NMC prescribed cut-off marks besides scoring minimum 50 % marks in school exiting class for general category. Some countries require a passing score in their own qualifying medical entrance exam like NMAT in Philippines. Quality of education, FMGE (Now NEXT) success rate and cost of overseas MBBS programs are the main factors considered by medical aspirants and their parents.

Studying abroad demands meticulous planning; students need to plan their application process keeping in mind the university deadlines. They must have needed documents in place for seamless processing of their application. Hence, students are often notified to apply 3-4 months in advance to avoid any last-minute hurry. Applicants depending on education loans, financial aid, scholarships should put in another couple of additional months to the procedure as such applications take more time.