Research during MBBS in India: how to get selected for ICMR STS 2027, and what to do if you're not

Why do most students miss ICMR STS, and how do you get selected?

Most students who miss STS miss it because they don't understand research yet. Here's how it usually goes: you find a faculty member, the faculty member writes the proposal, and your name goes on top. That isn't what STS was built for, and it's the weakest application you can send. So here's this guide's argument: learn the methods, read what the government is funding right now, and ask your own question in one of those fields.

DHR doesn't publish its marks or its reasons for rejecting a proposal (DHR guidelines), but its own documents point the same way:

• STS exists to build your research skills
• The proposal has to be your work
• DHR wants questions that matter to public health
• The government publishes what it wants answered

STS exists to build your research skills: DHR's scheme guidelines give its aim as "to promote interest and aptitude for research among medical/dental undergraduates", with students learning research methodology "by undertaking independent short-term research projects" (DHR guidelines). A proposal you can't explain builds neither.

The proposal has to be your work: DHR says every submission "must be prepared by the student under guidance". On the attestation form you certify that the proposal is "an original work prepared under the guidance of my Guide", and your guide certifies that you prepared it (DHR guidelines; attestation form). Your guide guides. You write.

DHR wants questions that matter to public health: its STS FAQ encourages topics that are "innovative, relevant to public health, and aligned with current research trends" (STS FAQ, question 23). The scheme guidelines go further: research priorities "should coincide with the National health priorities", such as maternal and child health, nutrition, communicable diseases, mental health and the major non-communicable diseases (DHR guidelines).

The government publishes what it wants answered: ICMR's National Health Research Programme names eleven conditions, from antimicrobial resistance and tuberculosis to anaemia, neonatal mortality and mental health (page updated 21 January 2026). The live calls show where the money is going. ICMR's 2026 small grants gave preference to priority conditions such as TB, antimicrobial resistance and anaemia in women and children, its calls page keeps adding new calls, and the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF), India's apex research funding body, has its Prime Minister Early Career Research Grant open from 2 November to 2 December 2026. These calls are for faculty, not students, but they're the clearest map of the problems the country wants solved.

So here's the way in, in three moves:

1. Learn the methods first: study designs, bias, sample size and how to read a paper, so you can justify every choice in your concept note. Tau Square Academy's free Phase 0 (14 short lessons) takes you from "where do I start?" to your first research question, and Advanced Fundamentals (11 lessons, free after Phase 0) covers choosing a study design.
2. Read the active calls: spend an evening on ICMR's priority list, its calls page and ANRF's funding opportunities, and note the problems that keep coming up.
3. Ask your own question in one of those fields: narrow it to something you can answer in two-month summer blocks at your own hospital, then take it to a guide. What share of pregnant women in your antenatal clinic take their iron tablets is an STS-sized question in a priority area. A drug trial isn't, because STS doesn't allow clinical trials.

Can an MBBS student do research, and when should you start?

Yes. Any MBBS student can do research from first year, and the National Medical Commission (NMC) counts "Researcher" among the roles every Indian medical graduate should fill (more on that below). Start in first year, because the main national funded route, the Short Term Studentship (STS), is open only in the first two years of MBBS.

Here's what to start, and when:

• Learn the methods in first year
• Start a project once you have a guide and a narrow question
• Apply for STS in the first-year call

Learn the methods in first year: Study designs, bias and how to search and read papers sit naturally alongside anatomy and physiology, as the publishing guide explains. Workshops alone won't do it, though: one of us spent thousands of dollars on workshops and courses in medical school and still didn't get published. The free lessons in the three moves above are a structured place to start, and choosing a study design is the first thing an STS methodology section asks you to justify.

Start a project once you have a guide and a narrow question: In first year that usually means helping on a faculty member's study, writing up an unusual case with a consultant, or starting a systematic review (a review that tries to find every study on one precise question, using methods set in advance) with a small team. The publishing guide covers choosing your first project.

Apply for STS in the first-year call: You can apply in first year and again in second year, so starting early gives you two tries instead of one (the rules are below).

Is research during MBBS useful for NEET-PG or the USMLE?

Not for your NEET-PG rank. Under NMC's Postgraduate Medical Education Regulations, 2023 (PGMER-2023), MD and MS seats are filled from merit lists based only on NEET-PG marks, or on the planned National Exit Test (NExT) once it replaces NEET-PG, so papers and STS add nothing to your rank (Regulations 4.1 and 4.3). Research pays off in two other places:

• MD and MS, where research is compulsory
• The US residency application, if you take the USMLE route

MD and MS, where research is compulsory: PGMER-2023 makes research a condition of sitting your final exam (details below), and a project during MBBS means your thesis won't be the first time you write a protocol or face an ethics committee.

The US residency application, if you take the USMLE route: Research doesn't change your USMLE scores, but it counts in the Match. ERAS, the US residency application system, has a "Scholarly Work" section for peer-reviewed journal articles, abstracts and book chapters, plus oral and poster presentations. Papers can be listed as submitted, accepted or published, and you can star up to three as your most meaningful work (AAMC, 2027 MyERAS guide). How much you need depends on the specialty.

Honestly, if NEET-PG is your only plan, keep research small and steady. One project done properly teaches you the whole process, and it won't eat into your exam preparation.

What is ICMR STS, who is eligible, and how much does it pay?

ICMR STS, the Short Term Studentship, is a national scheme that pays MBBS and BDS students in their first or second Professional year (Phases I and II of MBBS) ₹60,000 to carry out their own small research project under a faculty guide at their college. The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) used to run it; the Department of Health Research (DHR) in the Health Ministry now runs it through its Human Resource Development (HRD) scheme. Results still appear on ICMR's website, which is why nearly everyone calls it ICMR STS.

Two terms first: DHR calls your proposal a concept note, and the institutional ethics committee (IEC) is the committee at your college that reviews research on people. Here are the rules at a glance, from DHR's own documents:

Two details are easy to miss. The money comes slowly: DHR's tentative timeline for the 2025 batch runs from applications in April and May 2025 to the final instalment in mid-2029 and e-certificates in August 2029. And first-year applicants work across their first to third Professional years, second-year applicants across their second to fourth (DHR guidelines), so a first-year start finishes a year earlier in your course.

Can you do STS in third year, or apply twice?

You can't apply in third year, but you can apply twice: once in first year and again in second year, if you weren't selected the first time. Once you're selected, you can never hold STS again. Three rules decide this:

• Third-years have been out since 2025-26
• Two applications, one award
• One student per guide per call

Third-years have been out since 2025-26: DHR's 2024-25 call for students then in third year was a one-time measure while the scheme moved to its three-year format, and it said third-years would not be eligible from 2025-26. If you're in third year now, go straight to the routes that don't need STS.

Two applications, one award: DHR allows one application per call, and the call usually comes once a year, so you can apply in two different calls. Once selected, you can't apply for STS again in your lifetime (FAQ, question 24).

One student per guide per call: A guide can forward only one application in each call and a student can submit only one proposal; if either sends more than one, all of those proposals are rejected (DHR guidelines). So ask your guide before a classmate does.

When does ICMR STS 2027 registration open, and what's the last date?

As of 6 November 2026, DHR hasn't announced STS 2027. If the last two cycles are a guide, expect the call around April 2027 and a deadline around the end of May, but treat every 2027 date as unconfirmed until DHR publishes it.

Here's how the 2026 cycle actually ran:

• 21 April 2026: the call for proposals, with applications on DHR's ePMS portal.
• 30 May 2026, 5 pm: the original deadline.
• 10 June 2026, 5 pm: the extended deadline, announced in a notice dated 30 May.
• 17 August 2026: the results, with 2,053 students selected.

The year before had the same shape: the 2025 call was dated 8 April with a 31 May deadline, according to DHR's archive. One caution: DHR's HRD guidelines were written for the 15th Finance Commission period, 2021-22 to 2025-26. The scheme carried on into 2026-27, and DHR was still issuing HRD calls as late as 28 September 2026, but a 2027 STS call depends on the scheme continuing.

So don't wait for the notice. Work backwards from a deadline around the end of May:

1. December to January: learn the basics and shortlist two or three questions you care about.
2. By February: agree the topic with your guide, and check they haven't promised their one application to someone else.
3. March: read the literature, work out your sample size and write the concept note.
4. April: register on the portal when the call opens, and start collecting signatures on the Application Attestation Form.
5. May: submit at least a week before the deadline.

There's a saying worth keeping close: fast is slow, slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. A concept note written calmly in March beats one assembled in the last week of May, and the signatures alone take time: the attestation form needs you, your guide, your head of department and the head of your college.

How do you write an ICMR STS proposal that gets selected?

Ask your own question in a national priority area, small enough to answer in two-month summer blocks, follow DHR's concept-note format exactly, and leave nothing in the file that identifies you. DHR won't share reasons for rejection or reviewers' marks (DHR guidelines), so the best evidence is its own format and rules, plus two student-written college guides.

The official format and word limits

DHR's concept-note format, the version on its HRD page in October 2026, asks for Times New Roman 12 point, single-spaced and justified, with these sections:

1. STS Reference ID: generated when you register, and the only identifier allowed, top left on page one.
2. Title (25 words maximum): short and specific, naming the main variables.
3. Introduction (300 words): why the question matters, what's known and the gap you'll fill, backed by recent literature.
4. Objectives (100 words maximum): specific and achievable, with a hypothesis if you have one.
5. Methodology (800 words): design, population, sample size and selection criteria, data collection and tools, quality control, confidentiality, analysis plan and ethics. Name only the district where you'll collect data, never the hospital or college.
6. Implications/outcome (100 words): what the study adds, and the skills you'll gain.
7. References (300 words maximum): Vancouver style (numbered in the order you cite them), from PubMed-indexed research articles only.

You can go up to 100 words over in any section except the title. There's no timeline section, so add two or three lines to your methodology on what you'll do each summer. Searching for an "STS proposal sample PDF"? DHR's HRD page doesn't post one; for proposals it has the format, a list of study types and subject areas, and the forms.

Pick a question that fits two-month blocks

Student-written guides from KGMU (2020) and GMC Patiala (2022), written for the older ICMR version of STS, steer students towards simple observational designs (studies that measure without changing anyone's treatment), such as a cross-sectional study, which measures something in a group of people at one point in time. Both warn against overdone topics, such as screen time and sleep in medical students or the prevalence of hypertension, and GMC Patiala's adds that complex projects get rejected because they're unlikely to finish. Shape the question itself with PICO (population, intervention, comparison, outcome), as in the publishing guide.

A worked example: is your sample size realistic?

Say you want to know what share of adults with type 2 diabetes in your medicine outpatient department check their feet daily, and suppose earlier studies put it at about 30%. A standard formula for estimating a proportion is n = Z² × p × (1 - p) ÷ d², where Z is 1.96 for 95% confidence, p is the proportion you expect and d is your precision, how close to the true figure you need to be (Charan and Biswas, 2013). Here's what the choice of precision does:

• Within 5 percentage points: 1.96² × 0.3 × 0.7 ÷ 0.05² = 323 patients, or about 360 once you allow for one in ten declining.
• Within 7 percentage points: 1.96² × 0.3 × 0.7 ÷ 0.07² = 165 patients, or about 185 with the same allowance.

If about 25 eligible patients a week agree to take part, 360 takes more than 14 weeks, far longer than a two-month break, while 185 fits in 7 to 8 weeks. Agree the numbers with your guide or your community medicine department, and show the calculation in your methodology.

Not selected for ICMR STS? What research can you still do?

Plenty: none of the main routes, from a systematic review to an ethics-approved observational study, needs DHR at all. With STS sized at about 2% of undergraduate seats, not getting it is the normal outcome, not a verdict on you.

Picture results day. The PDF opens, you search it for your name, and it isn't there. That's how results day goes for most applicants, so have your next step ready before the list comes out.

Your proposal isn't wasted either: with your guide and your IEC's approval you can run it as an unfunded college project, or, if you applied in first year, improve it and apply again. Beyond that, here are the routes that don't depend on STS, starting with the one that needs the least access:

• A systematic review or meta-analysis
• A case report, with the patient's consent
• A clinical audit or quality-improvement project
• An observational study approved by your ethics committee
• A conference presentation of any of these

A systematic review or meta-analysis: A meta-analysis is the statistical step that combines the results of the studies a systematic review finds. You need a laptop, database access and time rather than a lab or funding, so this route depends on neither STS selection nor a guide's single STS slot. ICMR's national ethical guidelines (2017) list systematic reviews and meta-analyses of public-domain data among proposals that may be exempt from ethics review, but only the committee can decide that (Table 4.2 and section 4.8.3), so ask your IEC for an exemption letter. Register the protocol before data extraction (see registering a review); ICMR's free Beginner's Guide for Systematic Reviews helps too. Systematic reviews are what Tau Square Academy teaches, and the guide to doing one as a medical student walks through the whole process.

A case report, with the patient's consent: A case report describes one patient with something genuinely unusual, written up with the consultant who managed the case. Under the ICMJE recommendations, identifying details can be published only when they're essential and the patient gives written informed consent after seeing the manuscript, and ICMR's guidelines say publications must protect participants' identity, with specific consent for publication if it wasn't taken earlier (section 2.3.3). Write it up with the CARE checklist (see reporting guidelines). Know its limits, though: NMC's 2025 faculty regulations count case series, but not single case reports, as research publications.

A clinical audit or quality-improvement project: An audit compares what your hospital actually does with an agreed standard, for example how many ward patients get a recommended check, and measures again after a change; a quality-improvement project designs and tests that change. ICMR's guidelines list quality-assurance audits within an institution among proposals that may be exempt from review, but again the committee decides. You'll need the department on board, since it's their practice you're measuring.

An observational study approved by your ethics committee: A questionnaire survey or a review of past records is an STS-style project without the stipend, and it needs IEC approval before you collect any data; studies of non-identifiable records may qualify for faster, expedited review (ICMR guidelines, Table 4.2). Apply early: the KGMU and GMC Patiala guides report approval taking about three to five months at their colleges.

A conference presentation of any of these: A poster or short talk at a student or national conference is an early milestone and practice for the poster or podium presentation you'll need in MD or MS. The nerves are real (one of us still remembers them from a first conference talk), but presenting is a skill, and it improves with practice.

What does NMC's CBME curriculum expect of you?

NMC expects every Indian Medical Graduate to be a "Researcher", one of seven roles in its Competency Based Medical Education (CBME) curriculum, but it doesn't require MBBS students to publish. What's compulsory is a one-month elective in final year, and research methodology is one of the topics colleges may offer for it.

The CBME guidelines of 12 September 2024 describe the Researcher as someone who generates and interprets evidence for patient care and contributes to medical research. They list three competencies under that role:

• reading and critically appraising the literature, to practise evidence-based medicine;
• applying a methodical approach to scientific enquiry to generate evidence;
• understanding the basic principles and ethics of research governance.

The same document sets the electives: one month in two 15-day blocks in Phase III Part II, compulsory for every student, with topics chosen by each college from areas such as research methodology, research ethics and evidence-based medicine. You need 75% attendance and an elective logbook to sit the university exam, or NExT once it applies.

So the curriculum points you towards research but leaves the doing to you: any research elective comes in final year, long after your STS window has closed.

What research will you need later for MD or MS?

In MD or MS, research stops being optional. Under PGMER-2023, every postgraduate writes a thesis, completes an online research-methodology course, and must present at a conference or publish a first-author paper before being allowed to sit the final exam. Here's that last rule in full:

A post-graduate student of a degree course in broad specialty/super specialty will do at least one of the following to make him/her eligible to appear in his/her final examination: a. Poster presentation at a National/Zonal/State conference of his/her speciality; b. Podium presentation at a National/Zonal/State conference of his/her speciality; c. Have one research paper published/accepted for publication in journal of his/her speciality as first author

The rest of the research load, from the same regulations:

• A thesis: every broad- and super-specialty student does one (Regulation 5.2(iii)); it carries 20 marks, 5% of the clinical, practical and viva total, assessed by an external examiner from outside your state.
• A research-methodology course: online, through a designated institution's portal, expected in first year, with the certificate required to sit finals (Regulation 5.2(xi)). The regulation doesn't name the course. In practice it's the Basic Course in Biomedical Research (BCBR), run by ICMR's National Institute of Epidemiology: NMC's website lists it for postgraduate medical students and teachers, and NIE lists it for MD, MS, DM and MCh students admitted from 2019-20 onwards.
• An ethics course: including Good Clinical Practice, also expected in first year and also required before the exam.

PGMER doesn't say which journals count for the first-author paper, so aim for work that keeps counting. NMC's faculty regulations of 30 June 2025 count only original papers, meta-analyses, systematic reviews and case series in journals indexed in Medline, PubMed Central, Science Citation Index, Embase, Scopus or DOAJ (or other journals NMC specifies) as research publications, and each promotion to associate professor and to professor needs at least two, as one of the first three authors. In this guide's reading, that makes a first-author systematic review or original study in an indexed journal the safest single target. ICMR's guidelines add a protection worth knowing: research done as a course requirement, including student research, should have the student as its primary author (section 3.5.1).

A year-by-year research plan from first year to internship

Learn the methods and apply for STS in first year, finish one real project by third year, keep final year light, and use internship for a project in the specialty you want. Here's what that looks like from zero, with realistic rather than ideal targets:

If you're selected for STS in second year, shift the STS steps a year later. Expect publishing to be slow: systematic reviews take more than a year on average from registration to publication, so a paper started in second year may come out in internship. And fit research around MBBS in small blocks, not whole weekends. One of us split research days into two-hour blocks: creative blocks for reading and spotting the next gap, execution blocks for doing the work. Two or three a week will keep a project moving through exam season.

Frequently asked questions