Hello Swetha. You mentioned your expected marks is 492 out of 720 and that you belong to OBC-NCL (BC) category .  Based on your marks, your overall percentile ends up around 93.63 - 94.13 and your AIR may end up somewhere around 94510 - 111660 considering difficulty of the paper to be moderate. Quite naturally, your rank will get decreased when Tamil Nadu State Merit List will be announced by the concerned authority prior to State counselling processes.

Based on your expected marks and previous years' data, it is less likely for you to get admission at Government medical colleges although you may get admission to MBBS at few Private medical college under Government Quota. Some of these colleges are:

1. Dhanalakshmi Srinivasan Medical College and Hospital, Perambalur
2. IRT Perundurai Medical College, Perundurai
3. Karpaga Vinayaka Institute of Medical Sciences, Kancheepuram
4. Karpagam Faculty of Medical Sciences and Research, Coimbatore
5. Kilpauk Medical College, Chennai
6. KMCH Institute of Health Sciences and Research, Coimbatore
7. Madha Medical College and Hospital, Chennai
8. Melmaruvathur Adhiparasakthi Institute of Medical Sciences and Research, Kancheepuram

If you prefer to pursue MBBS from Government medical colleges then I must say, you should start preparing for the next year.

Careers360 has brought an exhaustive E-learning program "NEET Knockout" for the complete preparation of NEET UG. Click on the link below to know more about the course:

https://learn.careers360.com/knockoutfull-neet-may/

To know more about the cutoff trends in Tamil Nadu for NEET UG based on previous years' data, consider referring to this article:

https://medicine.careers360.com/articles/neet-cutoff-tamil-nadu

To know more about NEET UG overall Cutoff trends, follow this article:

https://medicine.careers360.com/articles/neet-cut-off

To know his admission chances in medical/dental colleges with NEET Score, to get a personalized report with Top MBBS & B.D.S Colleges and to check course & counselling wise cut-offs of NEET for various state quotas, caste groups etc., I encourage you to use NEET UG 2021 College Predictor or share this tool with the candidate:

https://medicine.careers360.com/neet-college-predictor?utm_source=qna&utm_medium=neet_rp

To answer your query, I should say booking for hostel and paying hostel fees is not optional and one should opt for hostel only if he/she stays further away from the campus or if the daily journey appears to be tedious and exhausting.

I hope you find this information helpful. I wish you all the best for your future and career.

Thank you.