Let me try to give you a clear picture.

Category Rank - It is a rank that you have secured in a specific or particular category. For example, let's suppose the total number of SC candidates in the NEET exam is 15000 and your category rank(SC rank) is 1500, then it means that you have among the top 1500 students out of 15000 students of your category.

All India Rank - It is the rank you secured among all the students of India including all the categories.

Now the question is how are these ranks are related to the admission process?

So the answer is it is related because of reservation criteria.  According to the NEET system  As per the reservation criteria of NEET 2020, out of the total 15% seats are reserved for SC candidates, for ST candidates 7.5 % seats will be kept reserved while 27% of the seats are reserved for OBC candidates.

It benefits reserved category students. As seats are already fixed for these students, so even if they get some lower rank than a student who has no category, he can get seat as the reserved category seats have to be filled first.

Let me know in the comment section if you have some more doubts related to it.

Thank you and all the best.

Hello Aspirant,

Let me explain you from an example so that you can better relate it to yourself :

Suppose 12 Lakh candidates are going to appear for NEET and out of these 12 Lakh candidates there are approxx.1.5 Lakh SC category candidates. Now when the rank list will be prepared according to the marks scored by you, a ranking will be allotted to you and if you belongs to SC category then you will be allotted two ranks one is ALL INDIA RANK and other is SC rank. All India rank will be allotted to your on the basis of all those 12 Lakh candidates but just opposite for SC rank, SC rank will be allotted to you on the basis of only those 1.5 Lakh candidates therefore category rank is always lower than the All India rank.

I hope this information helps you, if not then you can ask you further doubts in comment section below.

Good Luck!!