Biology Today
Biology Today is an English-language monthly magazine published from Gurugram, Haryana, by MTG Learning Media Pvt. Ltd. It is a competitive-examination magazine for students preparing for medical entrance examinations, above all the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test, NEET, and for school board examinations. One of four monthly magazines published by MTG, alongside Physics for You, Chemistry Today and Mathematics Today, it organises the biology syllabus of Classes 11 and 12 into monthly study units combining condensed textbook material, concept maps, high-yield facts, practice tests and solved and practice papers for NEET, other entrance examinations and the CBSE board examinations. Issues are substantial productions of about 92 pages, sold by subscription in print and in digital e-magazine form across India.
Publisher: MTG Learning Media
Biology Today is published by MTG Learning Media Pvt. Ltd., an education publishing group established in 1982 and headquartered in Gurugram, Haryana. MTG describes its mission in terms of improving the quality of science education, enhancing students' interest in science and fostering their analytical ability, with the practical goal of helping engineering and medical aspirants become successful professionals. The group claims a readership of more than one crore, that is ten million, readers across its publications, and publisher listings raise that figure to more than 1.25 crore for its magazines and books together. MTG's catalogue extends well beyond its four magazines to Olympiad books, school textbooks, board examination books and medical and engineering entrance books, making Biology Today the periodical expression of a large competitive-examination publishing programme. The company's official site is at mtg.in, and enquiries for print subscriptions are directed to its published contact address.
One of four MTG monthly magazines
Biology Today belongs to a set of four subject magazines that together cover the full syllabus of India's engineering and medical entrance examinations: Physics for You for physics, Chemistry Today for chemistry, Mathematics Today for mathematics and Biology Today for biology. The four are sold individually and in combined subscription offers, described by sellers as a money-saver package for medical and engineering aspirants, and they share a common editorial architecture of class-wise units, practice papers and competition features. Within that set, Biology Today serves the medical stream in particular, since biology is the defining subject of the NEET examination, while also serving the same students' board examination needs in the subject. The magazine's position in a four-title system matters for its readers: a NEET aspirant subscribing to the set received, month by month, a coordinated programme across all the subjects of the examination from a single Gurugram publisher.
The examination it serves: NEET and the boards
The National Eligibility cum Entrance Test, NEET-UG, is India's national entrance examination for undergraduate medical courses including MBBS and BDS, conducted by the National Testing Agency, with its syllabus prescribed by the National Medical Commission and based on the NCERT textbooks of Classes 11 and 12. Biology carries half the examination: 90 of its 180 questions and 360 of its 720 marks are in biology, divided between botany and zoology. No other subject offers a candidate so large a share of the total score, which is why a dedicated monthly biology magazine has a clear function in the preparation market. Alongside NEET, Biology Today addresses the CBSE board examinations taken at the end of Class 12, state-level tests such as the Karnataka CET, and the CUET undergraduate entrance, all of which appear in its contents through solved papers, practice papers and warm-up features, as well as earlier medical entrances such as AIIMS and JIPMER named in its subscription descriptions.
Inside an issue: Class 11 and Class 12 units
The core of Biology Today is organised by school class, reflecting the structure of the syllabus it teaches. Each issue carries units for Class 11 and for Class 12, so that a subscriber in either year of senior secondary school finds material matched to current study, while aspirants revising the whole syllabus encounter both years continuously. The recurring feature names recorded in the magazine's published contents show how an issue is built. Biodigest units present condensed treatments of textbook chapters, such as the Animal Kingdom, Plant Kingdom, Principles of Inheritance and Variation, Human Reproduction and Reproductive Health, and Sexual Reproduction in Flowering Plants. NCERT Xtract features draw material directly from the NCERT textbooks on which the examinations are based, covering topics such as Reproduction and Ecology. Concept maps present a chapter's structure visually, as in recorded maps for Respiration in Plants and Photosynthesis in Higher Plants, and features such as Zoom in Bio and Check Your Vitals test and deepen understanding of particular areas, from human genetic disorders to diversity in the living world.
Wrapped around the class units is the Competition Edge section, which carries the examination apparatus: NEET solved and practice papers, including a solved NEET paper in the issue following the examination, CUET practice papers, Karnataka CET solved and practice papers, and readiness features asking whether the reader is ready for the NEET or board examination. Monthly Test Drive features set timed tests on the chapters covered, and lighter elements recur across issues, including the Quiz Club, crosswords and word grids, Biogram features and, in earlier issues, Biology Olympiad problems, high-yield facts divided between botany and zoology, flowcharts and memory tips. Publisher descriptions summarise the offer as the essential material for success in pre-medical examinations: important texts, sample papers, previous years' papers, flowcharts and memory tips. An issue of about 92 pages carrying this mixture is less a magazine to be read once than a month's structured study unit.
How students use the magazine
The design of Biology Today reflects the way entrance candidates actually study. Because the NEET biology syllabus is drawn from the NCERT textbooks, the magazine's value lies in selection, condensation and testing rather than in new exposition: Biodigest and NCERT Xtract units compress chapters into revisable form, concept maps expose the structure that multiple-choice questions probe, high-yield facts collect the details most likely to be examined, and the monthly tests and practice papers convert reading into rehearsal under examination conditions. Appearing monthly, the magazine also imposes a pace, delivering the syllabus in portions through the school year rather than leaving candidates to face it whole in the final months. Discussion of MTG's magazines among aspirants consistently treats them as supplements to the NCERT textbooks and school or coaching notes, valued for previous years' questions, solved papers and the discipline of regular practice, and priced, in the period when single issues were widely sold at bookstalls, within reach of ordinary students.
Print, subscription and digital editions
Biology Today is sold principally by subscription, in schemes for one, two and three years, singly or in combination with its sister magazines, with copies traditionally sent by book post and courier or registered post available at extra payment. It is also distributed in digital form as an e-magazine through platforms such as Readwhere, where recent issues are catalogued with their full contents, including the June 2026 issue carrying the solved NEET paper of 2026 and a Karnataka CET solved paper, and through other magazine subscription services in print and digital editions. The persistence of the same feature architecture across issues separated by nearly a decade, from the February 2018 issue with its high-yield facts, concept map and CBSE board practice paper to the issues of 2026, shows a title whose formula has remained stable while the examinations around it have changed names and structures.
Gurugram and India's examination publishing industry
Biology Today's base in Gurugram, in the National Capital Region, places it in the centre of India's competitive-examination publishing industry, where large education publishers produce books and magazines for examinations taken by millions of candidates. MTG, founded in 1982, belongs to the generation of publishers that grew with the expansion of engineering and medical entrance testing in India, and its four monthly magazines institutionalised a simple idea: that preparation for a vast syllabus is best sold and best followed as a monthly service rather than as a single book. In a market where the NEET examination alone draws candidates competing for roughly a lakh of MBBS seats, a monthly that combines syllabus coverage with solved papers serves both an educational and an organisational purpose for its subscribers.
Significance
Biology Today is a representative product of India's entrance-examination culture at its most developed: an English monthly from a specialist Gurugram publisher, aligned precisely to the NCERT-based syllabus of NEET and the CBSE boards, in which biology carries half the marks of the national medical entrance test. Its documented contents, from Biodigest chapter condensations and concept maps to solved NEET papers and monthly test drives, show a magazine designed as a study system rather than as general reading. As one of MTG Learning Media's four monthly magazines, serving a readership the group counts in crores, it illustrates how periodical publishing in India adapted to the examination economy, delivering structured, test-oriented science study to medical aspirants across the country, month after month.
