TL;DR: The Philippine NMAT is now an online computer-based test you sit remotely, so there are no overseas test centres to travel to. Registration is exclusively online, you pick an International or Domestic slot at registration, and the fee is ₱1,900 domestic or US$60 international, credit card only, through Dragonpay. Scores come as standard scores and percentile ranks; CHED prescribes a 40 percentile rank minimum, and schools may demand far more — UST and St. Luke's both publish 85. Scores are valid two years and are delivered to every Philippine medical school on a masterlist. NMAT is not NEET, and it is not NMAT by GMAC.
What the NMAT Actually Is Now
The National Medical Admission Test is developed and administered by the Center for Educational Measurement, Inc. (CEM) as authorised by the Commission on Higher Education. If you intend to enrol in a medical degree programme in the Philippines, you take it. That includes foreign applicants.
The format matters more than most guides admit. CEM states plainly that "The NMAT is currently available as an online computer-based test (OCBT)" and that it "allows candidates (examinees) to take the exam remotely." There is no need to fly to Manila or Cebu to sit it, and the "test centres" language you will see in older material now refers to slots rather than buildings. CEM notes there are 300-500 slots per test session, and that if a date is full it simply disappears from the selection menu.
One consequence: every sitting runs on Philippine Standard Time, "for all test centers or slots, both international and domestic." If you are testing from India, that is two hours and thirty minutes behind PST; from Nepal, two hours forty-five. Work out your local start time before you book, not after.
Registration, Step by Step
Registration is online only. CEM is explicit that applications are "accepted exclusively online". Before you start, have these ready, because an interrupted registration is voided and you lose what you typed:
- A personal email address, not a school or office one. CEM warns those become inaccessible over time.
- A verified NMAT account. Do not create a second account if you already have one; the system flags duplicates and can block your registration.
- A recent 2x2 digital photo, maximum 600px by 600px, JPG, white background, no selfies.
- A valid ID. For foreign applicants CEM specifically lists the passport, and the ACR I-Card is also on the accepted list.
- A Philippine mailing address for delivery of your Examinee Report Form.
- A scanned transcript of records, certificate to graduate, or other acceptable proof of eligibility, issued or authenticated by your school registrar.
The Philippine mailing address requirement catches applicants out. CEM's shipping fee is stated as ₱80.00 per shipment, "Philippines only". If you are registering from abroad and have no Philippine address yet, sort that out before you begin the form rather than improvising a field entry.
You then select a payment partner in the portal, pay through Dragonpay, and within roughly two to five business days receive a payment confirmation and an NMAT Registration Form. Your Application Number is only issued to paid registrants and appears in the upper right of that form.
A detail worth memorising: when you later check your status, you must choose the correct slot — "choose the test date for PHP if you registered for the DOMESTIC slot or the test date for USD for the INTERNATIONAL slot." Domestic and international are separate listings of the same exam.
If your transcript is not ready at registration time, you can still register and email the document to CEM's requirements address, using the subject format Application Number_Complete Name_Scheduled Test Date.
Our general NMAT registration guide covers the local-applicant path in more detail.
Fees, Cycles and Retakes
| Item | Amount | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| NMAT taken in the Philippines | ₱1,900.00 | ₱500 registration + ₱1,400 test fee |
| NMAT taken outside the Philippines | US$60.00 | US$15 registration + US$45 test; credit card only |
| Duplicate Examinee Report Form | ₱50.00 per copy | Plus ₱80.00 shipping, Philippines only |
| Refund check request (overpayment) | ₱200.00 | Pay only when instructed by the Secretariat |
| Biographical change / photo change request | ₱200.00 | Free during the registration period |
Dragonpay service charges apply on top of the registration and test fee, and CEM states that payments made outside Dragonpay are "NOT traceable to your NMAT application and will be considered VOID."
Test administrations are "usually scheduled in the following months: October to November, January to February, and April to May." That is three windows a year, which sets the real deadline pressure: you are working backwards from a Philippine medical school's application cut-off, not from the exam calendar.
On the cancellation side, CEM's published policy allows cancellation within five working days of registration for a 90% refund of the test fee only; the registration fee is strictly non-refundable. Missing your test date forfeits everything, and your name is excluded from the masterlist sent to medical schools.
You may take the NMAT as many times as you like — "There is no limit to the number of times an applicant may take the NMAT" — but only one registration per cycle.
What Your Score Actually Says
The NMAT is a norm-referenced test. CEM reports two things: standard scores (SS) and percentile ranks (PR). For admissions purposes, only the percentile rank is used.
The percentile rank tells a school where you sat relative to the other examinees, not what percentage of questions you answered correctly. A PR of 60 means you scored at or above 60 percent of the reference group. This is why "I got 60 percent" is a meaningless statement about the NMAT, and why comparing an NMAT PR to a NEET score is a category error.
CEM states that CHED "prescribed a cut-off of 40 PR which is the minimum score required to qualify as a bona fide applicant for admission into your preferred medical school." Under CHED Memorandum Order No. 18, Series of 2016, your score must meet or exceed the minimum required by either the school or the Commission, whichever is higher, and scores obtained within two years prior to admission are valid.
The 40 PR floor is currently a live policy question in the Philippines rather than a settled one. CHED's Technical Panel for Medical Education held a public consultation on 30 July 2026 about amending the cut-off provision in CMO 18, s. 2016. Nothing about that consultation changes the rule today, but it does mean the number is worth re-checking in the month you apply.
What Schools Actually Publish
Here is the honest state of the published record. Most Philippine medical schools do not put a percentile requirement on their website at all; the ones that do tend to be the selective Manila institutions.
| School | Published NMAT requirement |
|---|---|
| CHED national floor | 40 percentile rank, or the school's own minimum, whichever is higher |
| University of Santo Tomas, Faculty of Medicine and Surgery | "a National Medical Admission Test (NMAT) score of in at least eighty-five percentile (85%ile)" |
| St. Luke's Medical Center College of Medicine | "NMAT percentile rank of 85 or higher" |
| Davao Medical School Foundation | Requires a photocopy of the NMAT result among 1st-year medicine admission requirements; no percentile published |
| Most other schools | Not published — ask the admissions office directly |
UST also publishes its acceptable NMAT test-date window rather than relying only on the two-year rule: for A.Y. 2026-2027 it lists test dates from January 2025 through February 2026, with online registration closing 31 March 2026, requirements due 6 April 2026 and application fee payment by 9 April 2026.
If an agency tells you a specific school's cut-off and that number is not on the school's own admissions page, treat it as unverified and email the school. This is a two-minute check that repeatedly turns out to matter.
Results: Timing and Who Sees Them
The electronic copy of your result is available 20 CEM business days after the last date of test administration. CEM is careful about its status: you can use the e-result for application purposes, but "acceptance of the e-result depends on the school's policies", and some schools still require the original Examinee Report Form.
Access to online results is time-limited and is usually disabled when the next registration period opens, so save a copy the day it appears. Duplicates cost ₱50 plus shipping.
The part few applicants realise: your score is not private to you. It appears on the Masterlist of Test Results (MTR), which is shared with all Philippine medical schools, CHED, the Higher Education Regional Offices, and the APMC Foundation office. CEM describes the MTR as "the sole basis for medical schools to verify the accuracy of test scores reported in the Examinee Report Form."
If you decide you do not want a particular sitting reported, CEM provides an NMAT Waiver form, usually open until the day after the last exam date. After that it closes and the score goes on the masterlist.
Foreign Applicants: The CHED Layer
Registering for the NMAT is only half of the foreign-applicant process. CEM directs foreign applicants to two CHED instruments: Executive Order 285, series of 2000, the consolidated implementing guidelines on the entry and stay of foreign students in the Philippines, and CHED Memorandum Order No. 18.
Be aware of a small inconsistency on CEM's own site: its eligibility page cites "CHED Memorandum Order No. 18 series of 2016" while its foreign-students page cites "series of 2018". The NMAT FAQ document, which is the more recent of the two, uses 2016 and quotes CMO 18, s. 2016 for both the two-year validity rule and the 40 PR cut-off. When you write to CHED or a school, quote the 2016 order and ask them to confirm.
CEM also notes that foreign nationals may obtain the Certificate of Eligibility for Admission to a Medical Course (CEMed) from the CHED Office of Student Services at the National Engineering Center Building, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City. St. Luke's, for example, publishes a US$40.00 payment for the Certificate of Eligibility alongside its enrolment charges.
Alongside the NMAT you will also need to satisfy each school's language requirement. UST, for instance, requires non-English-speaking international applicants to submit TOEFL scores with a minimum total of 93 and a minimum of 22 in Writing and Speaking. Our English test requirements guide covers the broader picture, and study medicine in the Philippines sets out the rest of the admission path.
NMAT vs NEET vs "NMAT by GMAC"
Three names, three different things, and two of them get confused constantly.
NMAT (Philippines) is the admission test CHED requires to enter a Philippine MD programme. It is administered by CEM, scored in percentile ranks, and valid two years.
NEET (India) is India's national entrance test. Indian citizens and OCIs who take a primary medical qualification abroad must have qualified NEET for that degree to count toward Indian registration, and NMC treats the NEET result as the eligibility certificate. It is not a Philippine admission requirement, but for an India-bound career it is not optional. We cover the rule and its exceptions in do you need NEET for MBBS in the Philippines.
NMAT by GMAC is an entirely unrelated management-school entrance test used in India, with its own fees and calendar. If a page describing "NMAT registration 2026" quotes a fee in Indian rupees around ₹3,000, mentions B-school programmes, or talks about GMAT scores, you are reading about the MBA exam. Close the tab.
If you are comparing the Philippine NMAT against the American test used for US medical schools, our NMAT vs MCAT comparison sets out the structural differences. And once you have a score in hand, the fee side of the decision is in the real total cost of MBBS in the Philippines.
Sources
- NMAT Frequently Asked Questions, February 2025 (PDF) — Center for Educational Measurement
- Eligibility & Registration Requirements — NMAT Online Registration System
- Payment & Refund Policy — NMAT Online Registration System
- Test Results — NMAT Online Registration System
- Admission to Philippine Medical Schools — NMAT Online Registration System
- Admission Procedures for Foreign Students — NMAT Online Registration System
- Faculty of Medicine and Surgery Admission — University of Santo Tomas
- Doctor of Medicine admissions — St. Luke's Medical Center College of Medicine
- Admission — Davao Medical School Foundation
- For Students to Study Abroad — National Medical Commission
- Guarding the gates of academic freedom: why the NMAT cut-off score imperils PH medical education — The Manila Times, 3 August 2026
