Get the most out of FindMyBranch
A start-to-finish plan for the counselling season. Everything named here is a feature on the site today.
Most candidates use a college predictor once, look at the top of the list, and close it. The people who come out best treat counselling as four separate jobs: find the seats they can realistically get, decide between them, submit a list in the right order, and act correctly in each round. This page shows which part of the site does each job and how to use it properly.
The season in eight steps
| When | What to do | Where |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Before the result | Collect your documents, turn on alerts, read the MCC rules once. | Documents checklist, Alerts, MCC rules |
| 2. Result day | Get your All India Rank (or GRANK for Tamil Nadu) and category certificate ready. | The wizard |
| 3. Answer the wizard | Category, PwD, quota, courses, and your specialties in order of liking. | Section 2 below |
| 4. Read the preview | Check the two free cards and the real counts, then decide on the report. | Sections 3 and 4 |
| 5. Build your list | Plan for the rounds, shortlist, choice list of 50 to 100 rows. | Sections 5 and 6 |
| 6. Lock in time | Lock the list before the choice-lock deadline of each round. | Calendar |
| 7. Each round | Join, tick willing to upgrade, or resign, by the rules. | MCC seat vs state seat |
| 8. After allotment | Report with every document in original before the reporting date. | Documents checklist |
1. Before the result: the three things that cost nobody anything
- Print the documents checklist. The recorded way to lose an allotted seat is a paper in the wrong form: an unstamped internship certificate, a state-format OBC certificate for a central seat. Fix these now, not on reporting day.
- Turn on notice alerts. Official notices are checked hourly and the important ones are emailed. The calendar also emails the day before each confirmed deadline. Dates marked expected are placed from last season and are never emailed until the official schedule replaces them.
- Read the MCC rules once, especially what Round 1 lets you do for free and when a deposit is lost. Every later decision leans on it.
2. Answer the wizard carefully, because everything after it depends on it
- Rank. Use your All India Rank. For Tamil Nadu you enter two different numbers: your Selection Committee GRANK and, if you want management seats, your Management Quota rank. They are not the same scale as the All India Rank, and the site never mixes them. If you only have marks, use the marks estimate, and treat every result as approximate until your real rank arrives.
- Category and PwD. Answer your real category. The site never estimates a closing rank for a category that has no record: a program with no recorded row for you is simply not shown. That is deliberate, not a gap. PwD is scored inside your own category, the way MCC applies it.
- Government, Management or Both. Government means merit-priced seats. Management means institution-priced seats. If a paid seat is possible for you, choose Both: government seats stay first in the order and management seats are added after them, so you lose nothing.
- Specialties, in order of liking. The order you tap is your order of preference and the results follow it. Take the 2-minute branch quiz if you are undecided. Do not narrow to one specialty on your first run: leave it open, see what your rank reaches, then narrow.
- State and course. Leave state on Any state first. Add a state filter only after you have seen what the whole country offers.
3. Read a result card in thirty seconds
| You see | What it means | What to do with it |
|---|---|---|
| Very likely / Possible / Hard | Your rank against the last recorded rank that got in for your category. | Put very likely seats last, possible ones in the middle, hard ones first, in your list. |
| Closing rank, year and round | The last candidate allotted in that round. A floor, not a promise. | A Round 3 figure is looser than Round 1. Compare like with like. |
| Seats allotted | How many people actually got in that year, split by round. | Two seats in the branch means one cancellation changes everything; do not trust a small room to spare. |
| Trend | A bar per year, and (in the report) each round of the reference year. | If it opened up in later rounds, that seat may come within reach in Round 2 or 3. |
| Fee, bond, stipend | Per year, with the year and source, as on record. | A bond penalty of ₹20 to 40 L is part of the price of the seat. Weigh it like the fee. |
| Culture flag ⚑ | Anonymous reports naming the college, and approved resident reviews. | A signal to ask about, never a verdict. Read it before you rank a college high. |
| “All rounds combined” or “so far” | The year came from a final list, or the season is still running. | Treat the first as a ceiling, the second as an early-round figure that will loosen. |
The Why? button on a card says exactly which category cell was used, so you can see when a seat was rated against the open category. To read closing ranks properly, see how to read the closing rank.
4. Free preview, then the report: when to unlock
The free preview is real data: your two best-matching very likely seats in full, and the true count of very likely, possible and hard seats at your rank. Unlock when the preview convinces you the data is right for your category and you want the rest. You pay with your email, nothing to sign up for first; we create your account at that moment and mail you a link to set a password, so the report follows you to any device once you sign in there.
| Free | The report adds |
|---|---|
| Two very likely cards, real counts, the trend bars, seats allotted, fee, bond, stipend, the calendar, all the guides | Every option in every tier, round-by-round history, fee and bond filters, the plan for the rounds, the comparator’s named seats, shortlist with alerts, the choice list builder, resident reviews |
5. Turn the list into decisions
- Your plan for the rounds gives four lines from your own list: what to fill first for Round 1, what tends to open up in Round 2, the honest stretch, and a cost warning. Use the Clinical only / Non-clinical only pills to see the plan for one side at a time.
- Fee and Bond filters. Cap the yearly fee and choose whether to see only seats with no bond on record. A fee cap hides seats whose fee is not on record and tells you how many, so nothing vanishes silently.
- Sort: My specialty order. Keeps your preferences at the top; switch to Closing rank when you want to compare colleges within one branch.
- Compare with a different rank. Ask how the counts change at a rank 10,000 worse, or at a marks figure, to see how much room your list has if the real rank lands lower than you hoped. In the report it names the seats that open up.
6. Build the two lists that matter: shortlist and choice list
- Star 10 to 15 seats you would genuinely join. When an official notice names one of those colleges or its state, you get one personal email about it. Starred seats also lead your plan and your choice list.
- Open the choice list builder. It builds up to 100 rows in the order MCC reads a list: dream seats first, then moderate, then safe. The allotment gives you the first seat on your list that is still free when your rank comes up, so a safe seat placed too high blocks every better seat below it.
- Drag rows by the grip, remove what you would never join, then copy, download or print. Aim for 50 to 100 rows: candidates who fill six colleges are the ones who end up with nothing in two rounds.
- Check every row against the official seat matrix before locking. The site’s numbers come from past rounds; the seat matrix is this season.
7. Act correctly in each round
- Round 1 has a free exit. If you want to be considered for an upgrade in Round 2, join the Round 1 seat and tick “willing to upgrade”. Skipping a safe seat to wait for a better one is the classic way to end up with neither.
- From Round 2 on, not joining costs your deposit. Put only seats you would actually take in your Round 2 and Round 3 lists.
- A joined Round 3 seat is final: no upgrade, no resignation, and you are removed from your state’s Round 3.
- Holding an MCC seat when your state result comes? Answer four questions on MCC seat vs state seat and get a plain verdict, then check the resignation window on the calendar.
8. Use the counselling expert for the questions a list cannot answer
The counselling expert is a chat that knows your rank, category, specialty order and shortlist, checks the same data the site uses, and remembers what you tell it. Ask it the judgement questions: whether to join a Round 1 seat or wait, what a resignation costs, how two seats compare on room to spare, bond and stipend, what happened to a seat in later rounds last year. Tell it your constraints once (a state you must stay in, a fee you cannot cross) and it keeps them. If you are still anxious after that, the same page has a tab to ask for a call with Dr. Rajiv Marechal.
9. Two things people forget
- Check your college before you rank a seat high: search any college for what residents say, and add your own review if you trained there.
- Results night exists for the night the result drops. If it goes badly, read it before you make any decision; nothing about your list needs to be decided that night.
10. The ten mistakes that cost seats
- Comparing a Round 3 closing rank with a Round 1 one.
- Filling six or seven choices instead of 50 to 100.
- Putting a safe seat above better ones in the list.
- Skipping a safe Round 1 seat to wait for Round 2.
- Not ticking “willing to upgrade” when joining in Round 1.
- Holding an MCC seat past the resignation window when the state seat is the one you want.
- Joining a Round 3 seat without knowing it is final.
- Reporting with a photocopy or an unstamped certificate.
- Ignoring the bond and the fee until after allotment.
- Relying on one year of data. Look at the trend and the round history.
The one-page checklist
- Documents ready and in the right form.
- Alerts on; deadlines noted from the calendar.
- Wizard answered with the real category; specialties in order of liking.
- Shortlist of 10 to 15 seats you would join.
- Choice list of 50 to 100 rows, dream first, safe last, checked against the seat matrix.
- List locked before the deadline.
- After each result: join and tick upgrade, or follow the resignation rules.
Not sure where you are in this? Start with how counselling works, or see every feature and what is free.