The top two highest spots in the FMGE passing percentage belongs to medical degree holders from Bangladesh (27.11%) and the Philippines (25.69%).
Only 14% of Indian foreign medical degree holders pass the FMGE
Indian students are known to go overseas, seeking for a good school to achieve their medical degrees. Sadly, even after being a medical degree holder, most of them fail when it comes to the Foreign Medical Graduate Exam (FMGE).
The FMGE is a licensure exam conducted by the National Board of Examinations (NBE) in India to give eligibility to practice medicine for Indian medical degree holders that went into foreign medical schools.
But so far, the percentage from the number of passers from 2015-2018 is concerningly very low.
The 2015-2018 data from the NBE shows, out of the 61,418 takers, only 8,731 passed, which translates into a low percentage of 14.22%.
Bangladesh and the Philippines top passing percentage
The exam is conducted twice a year. In the most recent results, the top three passing percentage where Indian students took their medical degrees are shown below:
- Bangladesh (27.11%)
- Philippines ( 25.69%)
- Georgia (20.69%)
For the record, Indian student crowded the most in China with 20,019 takers and Russia with 11,724, with a passing percentage at 11.8% and 12.9% respectively.
Is the FMGE reasonably difficult?
There were complaints several years ago from exam takers about the difficulty of the FMGE.
A special committee looked into this complaint and made a run-through of the exam, to find out that the difficulty was just right and appropriate for such a screening test.
Yearly, the FMGE is conducted twice, one in June and the other in December. A taker must not go below 50% in either exam to pass. Every taker is given a maximum of three attempts to pass the FMGE. If in case they won’t make it to the cut, they can possibly follow the path towards traditional medicine, which is also a popular choice in India.
Based on the results from the recent FMGE data, Bangladesh and the Philippines will likely be a country of interest for future students wanting to be medical degree holders with eligibility from the NBE.
