Islamabad: Kyrgyzstan has quietly emerged as the biggest refuge for Pakistani students who fail to secure admission in local medical colleges, absorbing the majority of thousands who head abroad every year after scoring poorly in the MDCAT, official examination data for 2025 shows.
Figures from the National Registration Examination Step I held in December 2025 reveal that Pakistani students who could not qualify for public or private medical colleges at home are now studying medicine in at least 31 countries across Asia, Europe, Africa and the Caribbean.
Out of 7,076 candidates registered for the licensing exam, a staggering 4,256 had graduated from medical colleges in Kyrgyzstan alone, making it by far the most favoured destination for rejected MDCAT aspirants.
China emerged as the second most popular destination, with 2,154 Pakistani students appearing in the exam. Afghanistan followed with 160 candidates, placing it among the top destinations despite its fragile health and education infrastructure.
Other major destinations included Kazakhstan with 174 students, Uzbekistan with 116, Tajikistan with 91 and Iran with 39 candidates. Smaller but notable numbers were recorded from Russia with 16 students, Ukraine with 14, Bangladesh with 11, Egypt with two and Saudi Arabia with three candidates.
Scattered cases were also reported from more than two dozen other countries, including Malaysia, the United Kingdom, Poland, Romania, Cyprus, Georgia, Hungary, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Belarus, Sudan, Barbados, Saint Lucia, Gambia and Belize, in some cases with just one or two Pakistani students from an entire country.
Health regulators say the data exposes a parallel medical education market that thrives on desperation. Students who fail to meet Pakistan’s merit based admission criteria often turn to foreign institutions offering low entry thresholds, easy admissions and aggressive marketing, particularly in Central Asia and parts of Eastern Europe.
The consequences of this trend are now becoming increasingly visible. Of the 7,012 candidates who actually appeared in the December 2025 National Registration Examination, only 1,473 managed to pass. This translates into a pass rate of just over 21 percent, meaning nearly four out of every five foreign medical graduates failed Pakistan’s mandatory licensing test.
Officials at the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council say the bulk of failures are linked to poor academic standards and weak clinical training at many foreign medical colleges attended by Pakistani students. A significant proportion of candidates, they note, studied at institutions that lack proper teaching hospitals, structured clinical exposure and credible assessment systems.
The trend is not new. Results of the previous NRE held in June 2025 painted a similarly grim picture, with only about one quarter of medical graduates passing and not a single dental graduate qualifying. Regulators say many of these students had secured very low MDCAT scores and would not have been eligible for admission in Pakistan under existing merit criteria.
Beyond academic failure, the financial cost is enormous. According to officials in the Ministry of National Health Services, Pakistani families spend more than 100 million dollars every year on medical education abroad, much of it on institutions with questionable quality and limited regulatory oversight. For many families, repeated exam failures mean lost years, emotional distress and little chance of practising medicine legally in Pakistan.
Pakistan already produces around 22,000 doctors annually through its own public and private sector medical colleges, yet a significant number struggle to find quality training opportunities or migrate abroad in search of better prospects. Health experts warn that the unchecked inflow of poorly trained foreign graduates further strains an already overburdened healthcare system and raises serious patient safety concerns.
Defending the National Registration Examination, PMDC officials insist the exam cannot be diluted to accommodate foreign graduates, stressing that licensing standards exist to protect patients rather than to validate substandard degrees.
As thousands of Pakistani students continue to chase medical degrees abroad after failing the MDCAT, the 2025 data lays bare a hard truth. While foreign colleges may offer easy entry, the path back into Pakistan’s medical profession remains steep, unforgiving and increasingly out of reach.
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