Karnataka MBBS counselling: round-by-round exit rules
At every allotment KEA gives you four clear options to pick from, and it locks your preference list before Round 1 even begins. The one fact that matters most here: you cannot add a brand-new college to your list after the first round. The list you build at the start is the list you live with for the rest of counselling.
Karnataka gives you four buttons at every allotment, and choosing the wrong one is how students lose a seat or a deposit. When you get a seat, you decide: accept and exit, accept and stay in for a better one, reject the seat but keep trying, or reject and leave. Behind all of this sits a single ranked option list that you fill in once. The software gives you the best college your rank can reach, and between rounds you edit that one list instead of filling fresh choices each time.
You fill one ranked option list before Round 1, and it carries forward through the whole process. You can delete or reorder options, but you can only add colleges that are newly added to the matrix.
You get a seat in Round 1 but want a better college
Choose 'accept and upgrade'. You pay the fee to hold your Round 1 seat, and you stay in the running for a higher option. If a higher option comes through in the next round, your Round 1 seat is cancelled automatically and you move to the new one; if nothing higher comes, the seat you held stays yours. If instead you hold no seat at all and only want to keep trying, choose 'reject and continue' and pay the ₹10,000 caution deposit.
That caution deposit is the catch. It gets adjusted against your college fee if you take admission, but you forfeit it if you don't. And surrender counts only when you do it in writing to KEA. Simply not showing up at the college does not count as giving up the seat.
Questions the full playbook answers
- What do the four choices at allotment actually do?
- When do I pay the ₹10,000 caution deposit, and when do I lose it?
- I want to upgrade. Do I refill my choices or just edit one list?
- What happens to my old seat once I'm upgraded?
- How much do I forfeit if I surrender a seat?
- Is just not reporting the same as giving up the seat?
- Does taking a seat in another counselling affect my KEA seat?
- What's the rural-service bond I have to sign?
Money at a glance
- Registration fee
- ₹750 for Karnataka candidates, ₹2,500 for non-Karnataka, ₹5,000 for NRI/OCI.
- Caution deposit
- ₹10,000 if you stay in the running while holding no seat. It's either adjusted against your fee or forfeited.
- Surrender forfeiture
- 50% of the fee on a concessional seat, or 20% on a higher-fee seat, if you surrender before the casual round; the full fee after it.
- Rural-service bond
- One year in a Karnataka health centre, signed at admission for every MBBS seat.
Get the Karnataka NEET Exit Playbook (PDF)
The full round-by-round decision tree, all 12 scenarios with their exact outcomes, the deposit and forfeiture map, and a fill-in deadlines sheet.
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Verified NEET UG 2025Source: KEA UGNEET-2025 instructions and the Round 2 / Round 3 counselling notifications, read directly, with forfeiture under the Karnataka CET-2006 Rules. Caste reservation percentages are fixed by a Government Order and not reproduced in the KEA bulletins; confirm them against the current order. Figures and rules reflect the 2025 cycle; 2026 material was not published when this page was prepared, and the page updates when it releases. It is a navigation aid, not the official notification; read the current KEA brochure at cetonline.karnataka.gov.in before entering options.