How KNRUHS counselling works, step by step: a Telangana MBBS walkthrough

Telangana MBBS counselling is run by KNRUHS, the state's health university, and it follows the same skeleton every year: registration, a merit list, choice filling, then allotment in rounds. The dates and fine print change each year, so treat the official notification for your year as the final word. What follows is the structure that does not change.

1. Registration and the merit list

You register on the KNRUHS counselling portal when the notification opens, upload your documents, and pay the registration fee. KNRUHS then publishes a merit list: every registered candidate in one serial order. This is your state merit rank, and it is the number almost everything else in counselling refers back to. Note that it is not your NEET All India Rank. In 2025-26 the Telangana merit list had 16,620 candidates; in 2023-24 it had 22,222. The pool size swings, which is one reason cutoffs move year to year.

2. Choice filling and locking

Before each round, you fill in your preferred colleges in order and lock them. This list is your actual application: the allotment software walks down your list and gives you the first college on it where your rank makes the cutoff for your category and quota. A careless choice list can cost you a seat your rank deserved, which is why ordering deserves its own planning.

3. Allotment in rounds

Seats are allotted in successive rounds. The 2025-26 Telangana counselling ran three main rounds (Phase 1, 2 and 3); earlier years ran two rounds plus a mop-up. Each round allots the seats left vacant by the previous one, plus seats freed when candidates resign or upgrade. Cutoffs therefore drift downward as rounds progress, though not uniformly: the most wanted colleges barely move, while the tail of the list moves a lot.

4. Reporting and admission

If you are allotted a seat, you download the allotment order and report to the college within the deadline with your original documents and the fee. Miss the reporting window and the seat is forfeited. If you want to try for a better seat in the next round, the notification will say whether you can hold the seat and upgrade, or must resign first. Read that clause carefully; it is the single most misunderstood rule in counselling.

Where candidates usually slip up

• Mixing up ranks. Comparing your NEET All India Rank directly against a state cutoff, or your state merit rank against a category cutoff. Each cutoff has a specific rank it must be compared with.
• Thin choice lists. Filling five choices when your rank sits near a cutoff cliff. More sensible choices cost nothing.
• Ignoring later rounds. A rank that misses every college in round 1 can still land a seat in round 2 or mop-up. The lists prove it every year.
• Missing the notification. Round schedules, resignation rules and eligibility tweaks live in the official notification, not in last year's blog posts.

The whole process rewards the candidate who reads the lists rather than the rumours. Our rank predictor is built from the actual KNRUHS allotment lists, so you can see where ranks like yours have landed, round by round.