PESHAWAR: More than 26,000 candidates have qualified entrance test for getting admission in public and private medical colleges of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to become Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS).

A total of 38,845 candidates appeared in Medical and Dental College Admission Test (MDCAT), conducted by Khyber Medical University on Sunday for the year 2026. Of them 26,108 (69.17pc) qualified for admission in MBBS and 28,436 (53.33pc) in Bachelor of Dental Surgery (BDS).

There are a total of 1,754 seats for medical students in the province and 1,021 are for open merit whereas the remaining will go to self-finance and students will be enrolled in line with quota system already in place. Forty-two seats have been reserved for each of Bajaur, South and North Waziristan, Khyber and former frontier regions (FRs) while Orakzai, Mohmand and Kurram have 43 seats.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has 10 public sector medical colleges and four dental colleges where students, both on merit and quota, will be accommodated. Those on top of the merit list usually get admission in Khyber Medical College Peshawar and Ayub Medical College Abbottabad while the rest go to other colleges located in Mardan, Dera Ismail Khan, Nowshera, Bannu, Kohat, Swat and Swabi.

53pc will be enrolled in dental colleges

There are 26 reserved seats for medical students of tribal districts in Punjab, five in Sindh, seven in Balochistan and six in Azad Jammu and Kashmir.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has 10 private medical colleges and six dental colleges, which have 1,100 MBBS and 325 BDS seats. The annual fee in private colleges is above Rs2 million per year.

The rest of the students, who have qualified the test, will get admission in private medical and dental colleges in the province.

KMU Vice-chancellor Prof Rubina Nazli told a news conference that a total of 38,845 candidates, including 20,738 girls and 18,107 boys, took the test at 60 air-conditioned examination halls in seven districts under tight security and results were declared within 12 hours.

“It is a great honour for KMU, the sole admitting university in the province, to conduct the test transparently,” she said.

Flanked by registrar Inamullah Khan Wazir, she credited the KMU staff, provincial government and security agencies for facilitating the transparent test during which no untoward incident happened.

According to her, 1,921 students obtained 170 to 180 marks, 4,527 from 160 to 169, 3937 from 150 to 159, 3,496 from 140 to 149, 3,144 from 130 to 139, 3,069 from 120 to 129 and 2,931 from 110 to 119 marks.

A senior member of MDCAT committee told Dawn that Prof Ziaul Haq, the former vice-chancellor of KMU and the current executive director of Higher Education Commission, had left behind a sophisticated and efficient system.

“The former vice-chancellor has identified and developed a credible team from within KMU and made substantial investments in equipment and infrastructure. These initiatives have reportedly enabled the university to prepare, print, transport, conduct, scan and process the results of nearly 40,000 papers within approximately four hours,” he said.

He said that it was an amazing achievement as to the best of his knowledge no other university or testing agency in the country currently possessed comparable capacity.

According to him, one of the most significant strengths of the system is its institutionalisation. “It has been designed to continue producing reliable results even in the absence of the individual, who developed it,” he added.

Given the system’s demonstrated performance and public confidence, any proposal to shift the responsibility from KMU to Education, Testing And Evaluation Agency (Etea), next year, would likely face considerable public scrutiny and concern, he said.

Published in Dawn, September 22nd, 2026