INI-SS Jan 2027: Admit Card Out, Exam on 24 October

Admit cards are being allotted today — the CBT is on Saturday, 24 October

The Institutes of National Importance Super-Specialty (INI-SS) entrance for the January 2027 session has reached its examination week. Under AIIMS Admission Notice No. 155/2026, registration for the session ran from 23 September to 9 October 2026, the status of applications has been available from 15 October 2026, and today, 20 October 2026, is the date for examination centre finalisation and admit card allotment. The Stage I computer-based test follows on 24 October 2026.

INI-SS is the single common entrance through which the Institutes of National Importance fill their DM and MCh seats — AIIMS institutions, PGIMER Chandigarh, JIPMER Puducherry, NIMHANS Bengaluru, SCTIMST Thiruvananthapuram and the other participating INIs run their super-specialty admissions through this one examination rather than separate institutional tests. For a postgraduate who has finished MD, MS or DNB and wants a DM or MCh seat starting January 2027, this Saturday's paper is the gate.

The session timeline, as notified

• 23 September – 9 October 2026: Online registration window.
• From 15 October 2026: Application status available to applicants.
• 20 October 2026: Examination centre finalisation and admit card allotment.
• 24 October 2026: Stage I computer-based examination.
• Application fee: ₹4,000 plus transaction charges; candidates in the PwBD category are exempt from the fee.

If you registered and have not yet checked your application status, do it before anything else in this article. An application that did not clear the status stage will not produce an admit card, and today — admit card day — is the worst possible day to discover that for the first time.

Who is eligible: the feeder-specialty rule and the 1 January 2027 deadline

INI-SS eligibility is built around the feeder specialty: each DM or MCh course admits candidates from specified postgraduate qualifications, and you must hold MD, MS or DNB in the feeder specialty prescribed for the course you have applied to. A qualification in a different specialty, however strong the degree, does not substitute.

The timing condition is equally strict: the eligibility requirements — including completion of the qualifying degree and its requirements — must be fulfilled by 1 January 2027, the start of the session. Candidates whose qualification will complete only after that date are not eligible for this session, regardless of examination performance. These two conditions — right feeder degree, completed by 1 January 2027 — are the eligibility core of the prospectus, and they will be verified against original documents later in the process. What you claimed in the application must match what your certificates say.

Stage I: 80 questions, 80 marks, 90 minutes, and a one-third penalty

The written stage of INI-SS is compact and unforgiving:

• Format: Computer-based test of 80 multiple-choice questions.
• Marks: 80 marks in total — one mark per question.
• Duration: 90 minutes.
• Negative marking: −1/3 mark for each wrong answer.
• Qualifying standard: A candidate must score 50% — 40 out of 80 — to qualify Stage I.

Translate that arithmetic into examination strategy. With a one-third penalty, a blind guess on a question you know nothing about carries negative expected value, while a guess narrowed down to two plausible options is a different calculation. Ninety minutes for 80 super-specialty questions is also a pace test: a little over a minute per question, in a paper drawn from your specialty at DM/MCh entry depth. Candidates who have prepared by revising their feeder specialty's core and recent-practice areas, and who walk in with a decided rule for when to attempt and when to skip, are using the format rather than fighting it.

The 50% qualifying line deserves a clarification that is often lost: qualifying Stage I makes you eligible for the next stage of the process for your course; it is not itself a seat offer. Merit within the qualified pool is what the subsequent stages work with.

What INI-SS does not do: no answer key, no challenge window

Candidates coming from NEET-pattern examinations often wait for a provisional answer key and a challenge window after the CBT. INI-SS has neither. AIIMS does not publish an official answer key for INI-SS and does not open a challenge process; results are declared directly after the examination. Plan accordingly: there will be no official key against which to compute your score, no challenge fee to budget for, and no key-based estimate worth trusting. Your next official information after 24 October is the result itself, so keep your admit card and application details safe — you will need them to access it.

Your checklist for the four days to the examination

1. Download the admit card today.Centre finalisation and admit card allotment are scheduled for 20 October. Download from your AIIMS applicant account as soon as it appears, and save a copy outside the portal as well.
2. Read the admit card completely.Verify your name, course applied for, examination centre and reporting instructions against your application. Any mismatch is a today problem, not a Saturday problem.
3. Plan the centre journey.Super-specialty examinations run at limited centres; if yours is in another city, finalise travel now, aiming to be in the city the night before rather than travelling on the morning of 24 October.
4. Assemble your documents.Admit card and the identity and qualification documents the admit card and prospectus require. Your eligibility — feeder-specialty degree completed by 1 January 2027 — is document-verified in this process; keep the originals organised from this week onward.
5. Set your attempt rule.80 questions, 90 minutes, −1/3 per error, 40/80 to qualify. Decide before you enter how you will handle questions you cannot narrow down, and hold the line under pressure.

Why this examination matters beyond its size

INI-SS is a small examination by candidate numbers and an outsized one by consequence: it is the common doorway to DM and MCh training at India's Institutes of National Importance for the January 2027 session — the AIIMS network, PGIMER, JIPMER, NIMHANS, SCTIMST and their peer institutes, each filling super-specialty seats through this single test instead of running separate entrances. The compressed calendar is part of its character: registration closed on 9 October, admit cards are out today, and the paper is on Saturday. There is no second window in this session. If you are sitting it, the work of the next four days is logistics and composure, in that order.

And the sourcing note that applies to every AIIMS item in this pack: the AIIMS portal is JavaScript-rendered and the notice body could not be read directly in this check, so Admission Notice No. 155/2026's number and the dates above are carried as recorded from the AIIMS admission listing. Confirm your own admit card, centre and instructions inside your applicant account — that account, not any summary page, is the authoritative version of your examination.

Official links

• AIIMS Examinations portal (INI-SS January 2027 notices, admit card, applicant login): https://www.aiimsexams.ac.in/

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