National Test for Programs After Twelfth(NPAT)

About the exam

About NPAT

The NPAT exam is not the only entrance test SVKM's NMIMS sets for candidates leaving Class 12. Its NMIMS Entrance Test for UG Admissions handout for 2026-27 opens by saying the university's undergraduate entrance examination "is categorized into four different categories namely: NMIMS-NPAT, NMIMS-CET, NMIMS-MST, NMIMS-LAT", and then lists which degrees sit under each. A candidate who registers for the wrong category has bought the wrong paper, and the same handout says a request to change the exam category after the exam "will not be entertained". So the first thing worth settling about NPAT is not its syllabus. It is whether the programme you want is behind it at all.

NPAT is the category that carries NMIMS's business, economics, advertising and liberal arts degrees. NMIMS's NPAT admissions site states that the test is used for entry into programmes in "Commerce, Economics, International Studies, Branding & Advertising, Liberal Arts, and Business Management" across its campuses in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Navi Mumbai, Hyderabad, Indore, Chandigarh and Ahmedabad. Its programmes panel maps each of those headings onto degrees: Commerce holds BBA, B.Sc (Finance), B.Com, BBA (Fintech) and the integrated BBA-MBA; Economics holds only B.Sc (Economics); Liberal Arts the B.A; Branding & Advertising its own BBA; International studies the BBA (International Business); and Management the BBA (Management & Marketing) and BBA (Finance).

Everything else at NMIMS takes a different paper. The 2026-27 entrance handout puts B.Tech, MBA Tech and the B.Pharm with MBA (Pharma Tech) under NMIMS-CET, the applied mathematical computing, applied statistics and analytics, data science and Cyber Intelligence degrees under NMIMS-MST, and the B.A.LL.B.(Hons) and B.B.A.,LL.B.(Hons) under NMIMS-LAT. Design sits outside that handout entirely: the School of Design's own B.Des Batch 2026 admission handout says admission to B.Des (Humanising Technology) is through NMIMS-DAT/HT, which it describes as a studio test, a personal interview and the submission of a hardcopy portfolio of original work.

What NMIMS calls the test on screen is worth noting, because the short name is used loosely elsewhere. The welcome screen reproduced in the university's own NPAT sample paper reads, "Thank you for choosing the National Test for Programs After Twelfth."

At a glance

NPAT highlights

Calendar

Important dates

The 2026-27 cycle is closed. The NPAT site's own banner now links UG 2026 orientation and commencement details, a sheet of per-school orientation dates and academic calendars, in the place its registration badge once sat. The windows the cycle ran on were these.

Read the middle row, not just the first. Registration and scheduling are separate acts in this exam, and for 2026-27 the testing window ran across months rather than falling on a single national exam day, so the date a candidate actually sat was one they had picked for themselves.

The admission rounds behind those dates changed mid-cycle. An important announcement from the NMIMS Admissions Team, published on the NPAT site and addressed to candidates for "NPAT, NLAT, NCET and MST associate programs for the upcoming academic year 2026-27", says the university "has decided to consolidate all admission rounds (Phase 1 and 2) into a single unified round, scheduled for June 2026", and adds that registrations and examination attempts completed so far remain valid and that candidates need take no further action at that stage. The NPAT site's FAQ still answers questions about upgrading a campus "during phase 2", so the two documents describe the round structure differently.

The individual schools then published their own dated sheets, and they do not all describe the same calendar. The School of Commerce Batch 2026 important dates sheet put the first merit list for BBA, B.Com, B.Sc. Finance, BBA (FinTech) and the integrated BBA-MBA on Monday 22 June 2026, with document upload and admission-fee payment from 22 June to 27 June 2026. The School of Economics sheet for B.Sc. Economics puts its first merit list a day later, on Tuesday 23 June 2026, with the payment window running to 28 June 2026. The School of Liberal Arts dates sheet for the BA Liberal Arts Batch 2026 is headed "Phase 2" and opens its own registration window on Monday 23 March 2026, not the handout's 28 January, while the row immediately below labels its 23 June list the "First Merit List-Phase 1".

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

The base requirement in the 2026-27 handout is a pass in 10+2 or an equivalent examination from a recognised board, and it states plainly that candidates appearing for their final 10+2 or equivalent examination can also apply for the test. Above that, the bar is not one number. It moves by school, and in four programmes it carries a subject condition as well.

Most NPAT programmes ask for a minimum of 50% aggregate marks in 10+2, and the handout's eligibility table applies that bar to BBA, B.Com and the integrated BBA MBA at the School of Commerce, to BBA in Branding and Advertising, to the BA in Liberal Arts, and to the Bachelor in Business Management and Marketing at the Pravin Dalal School of Entrepreneurship and Family Business Management. Some programmes add a subject condition on top of the same 50%, with Mathematics or Statistics "mandatory and should be passed": B.Sc. Finance and BBA (Fin Tech) at the School of Commerce, B.Sc. Economics at the School of Economics, and BBA Finance at the Pravin Dalal School. The NPAT site answers the same question from the other end, naming what a candidate can apply to without mathematics: BBA, B.Com, BBA (Branding & Advertising), BBA (International Business), BA (Liberal Arts) and BBA (Management & Marketing).

The outlier is the Center for International Studies. Its BBA (International Business) with Kingston University asks for a minimum of 60% aggregate marks, runs two years at the Mumbai campus and one at Kingston University, London, and requires a minimum IELTS score of 6.0, TOEFL 80 "or equivalent" from students for whom English is not a first language or who do not meet 70% and above in English Language, a requirement to be fulfilled within a year of the programme commencing.

There is an age bar, and it is easy to miss because the handout states it as an exception. It says candidates above 25 years of age can apply for the B.A LLB and BBA LLB programmes only, under the NLAT exam category, and that "the maximum age requirement for all other programs is 25 years old", per the same handout.

Several conditions sit alongside the percentage bar, and any one of them can make an otherwise qualified candidate ineligible. In the handout's wording, the aggregate counted is of all the subjects the candidate opted for and appeared in, "not the best of four, five, six, or seven subjects". The candidate must have passed every subject opted and appeared in the applicable examinations in a single attempt, and a subject marked ungraded or fail makes the candidate ineligible even where the board declares a pass, with Cambridge Board excepted. Only a single mark sheet carrying all compulsory subjects is accepted and a compartmentalised one is not, again excepting Cambridge. Where a board reports percentiles, a point system, GPA or CGPA, or performance bands, a certified equivalent aggregate percentage has to be supplied, and IB students need an official Indian conversion transcript.

Non-standard qualifying routes are covered too, and the handout treats them separately. Candidates who cleared 10+2 through a part-time course, distance learning, a correspondence course or open school from a recognised university are eligible to apply and register as per UGC guidelines. Candidates from an overseas school, institute or university, and those from open school, distance or correspondence routes, must additionally submit an AIU certificate of equivalence. In the handout's equivalence rules, an IB Diploma is read as equivalent to 10+2 where the candidate has 24 confirmed grades or credits and has passed three subjects at Higher Level and three at Standard Level, plus the extended essay and Theory of Knowledge, while an A Level result is calculated on a minimum of three subjects at advanced level with ungraded subjects left out. IB and Cambridge candidates without a final mark sheet are given provisional admission on predicted scores, and any candidate whose final mark sheet is unavailable at admission has to upload the internet or DigiLocker copy of the result within seven working days of the result being announced, on pain of the admission being revoked.

Step by step

Application process and fee

The decision that costs money is taken at step two, before any payment. A candidate creates an account on nmims.edu, then selects the test category along with the school, programme and campus preferences, then pays, and only then schedules the exam by choosing a date and a centre, in the order the handout sets out. Multiple test categories, multiple schools, multiple programme preferences and multiple retakes can all be selected at that second step, and the NPAT site's FAQ puts a ceiling on one of them: a candidate can apply to a maximum of five programmes. Campuses need no separate registration, because campus preferences are indicated inside the same common form.

Two administrative details are worth settling before that form is opened, because it asks for both. The name on the Aadhaar card and on the NMIMS registration or admission form must be identical, and AAPAR or ABC (Academic Bank of Credits) ID details must be ready before the registration form is filled.

The fee is not a flat number. It scales with how many schools the candidate picks inside the category, and a retake costs the same as the first attempt.

No category concession is attached to those amounts anywhere in the document, and the handout states that cancellation of registration is not allowed at any point of the process and that the registration fee is non-refundable and non-transferable. It also warns against registering twice in the same category: a duplicate registration from the same candidate is rejected, both registrations are annulled even if the exam has been taken, and the university reserves that discretion at any stage of the admission process.

Candidates with a disability apply through the same form with one addition. The handout asks for a disability certificate to be uploaded at the time of online registration, accepts a medical certificate from any government-authorised hospital, and specifies that for the Mumbai campus only certificates from Sion hospital or Nair hospital are accepted. The certificate is reviewed and approved by the university, the candidate is then emailed on the registered address, and only after that can the fee be paid and the examination scheduled. Appropriate assistance is to be made available at the test centre.

A separate route exists for candidates holding an American test score, and it is not a variation of the NPAT form. The SAT / ACT qualified candidates instruction sheet for Batch-2026 is its own handout with its own registration, a flat online registration fee of Rs 2,000 that is likewise non-refundable, two preferences across schools, and the NMIMS institute or DI code 7511 that has to be quoted while registering for the SAT examination. It says a valid SAT or ACT score since August 2024 is considered for the merit process, and that an ACT result has to be converted to SAT marks using the concordance table approved by the College Board and ACT before being entered in the registration form.

The merit list at the end of that route is also built differently. For the commerce, economics, liberal arts, international studies, family business and mathematics schools, the same sheet says the list is prepared on the SAT or ACT score and the preferences given at registration only, with a tie broken first on the Class 10 aggregate percentage and then on the date of birth. The qualifying examination result does not enter it the way the NPAT handout says it enters the NPAT merit list.

Before the exam

Admit card and exam day

The admit card is generated after the exam has been scheduled, and the handout says the test centre, city and selected exam date are displayed on it and that it can be downloaded from the candidate dashboard. The NPAT site's FAQ answers the same question differently, saying the admit card "will be emailed to you separately", so both the dashboard and the registered email address are worth watching. Scheduling itself triggers a confirmation mail to the registered email ID, sent from a Pearson VUE confirmations address, and the handout says a separate mail arrives for each exam scheduled.

At the centre the printed admit card is the primary identity document, not a backup. The handout asks for a hard copy of it plus a hard copy of one secondary ID from a closed list: Voters ID, Passport, Aadhaar Card, PAN Card, Driving License, or the 12th Board admit card with photo. A learner's licence is explicitly not accepted, and the name on the original government ID must exactly match the name on the admit card. Verification staff compare the photograph on the admit card with the person appearing for the examination, which is why the document asks for a recent photograph at upload. Candidates are told to reach the test centre at least 30 minutes before the scheduled time, and are allowed to sit the computer-based test only on the scheduled date and time.

One rule carries no exception. The handout says "Strictly NO Rescheduling or cancellation is allowed", and repeats the point where it explains that the test centre and date, once chosen, cannot be changed. The NPAT site puts the same answer in one line, that rescheduling the NPAT exam is not possible.

Structure

Exam pattern

One paper serves every NPAT programme, and its three sections carry equal weight, with nothing taken off for a wrong answer.

The 100 minutes belong to the whole test, not to a section. The table states the figure once, against the block of three rows, where the NMIMS-CET table in the same document gives each of its five sections its own minutes, and the welcome screen in the official NPAT sample paper settles it in a sentence: "You will have 100 minutes to complete the test." The screens that follow announce 40 questions in each section and no time of their own, so a candidate who overruns on Quantitative Reasoning is spending Verbal Reasoning's minutes.

The other categories are not this paper, and a candidate weighing up NMIMS options should know which one they would be sitting. In the same handout, NMIMS-CET for engineering and pharmacy runs five sections over 120 minutes, with Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics or Biology at 30 questions each, Logical Intelligence at 20 and Verbal Reasoning at 10, for 120 questions and 120 marks. NMIMS-MST keeps NPAT's 100 minutes and 120 marks but reweights them, with 60 Quantitative Reasoning questions, 40 Logical Reasoning and 20 Verbal Reasoning. NMIMS-LAT is the longest, five sections of 30 questions over 120 minutes for 150 marks, adding General Knowledge and Legal Reasoning to the three sections NPAT uses. None of the four carries negative marks.

What to study

Syllabus

One line sits directly under the NPAT structure table in the 2026-27 handout, and it is the entirety of what NMIMS says about content: the "Type of questions and difficulty level of Tests will be as per SAT Exam pattern". No topic is named under any of the three section headings, there or anywhere else in the document. What that line points a candidate at is a set of question shapes rather than a reading list, which is why the university's own sample paper carries more of the load here than the handout does.

How to prepare

Preparation and books

One download sits on the NPAT home page for practice, under a "Sample Papers" panel that describes it as designed to help improve exam performance through practice. What the sample paper actually contains is a set of Quantitative Reasoning, Logical Reasoning and Verbal Reasoning questions, an answer key giving the correct option for each, and the display screens the live test shows: the welcome screen with the timing and section table, a screen before each section, and an end screen. It is not a syllabus, and it is not a full-length mock either: its answer key runs to 60 questions, 20 in each section, while the display screens printed a few pages later in the same document announce 40 in each.

The question formats in it repay a look before any study plan is made. Several Quantitative Reasoning items in the sample paper are quantity comparisons, which give the candidate a Quantity A and a Quantity B and ask whether one is greater, whether the two are equal, or whether the relationship cannot be determined from the information given. Others ask whether a statement holds always, sometimes or never. Those are question shapes rather than topics, and they are what the handout's reference to the SAT pattern is pointing at.

Where it is held

Exam centres

No centre list appears in the 2026-27 handout. The centre is chosen by the candidate during scheduling, and the handout is blunt about what that choice costs: test date and test centre availability are subject to test centre capacity, slots are allotted on a first come first serve basis, and once chosen the centre and date cannot be changed for any reason. Its own advice is to schedule the slot at the earliest to avoid missing a convenient or preferred date, and it says the management will not be responsible for arrangements where an optimal slot is not available. The chosen centre, its city and the exam date are then printed on the admit card.

After the exam

Answer key

The sample paper carries an answer key for its own questions, printed as a table of sequence numbers against correct options. Nothing equivalent is published for the live test. The 2026-27 handout names no key release and no objection window, and the only thing it asks a candidate to do after the examination is update their 10+2 marks in the registration form as soon as the board declares them.

Scores

Result and scorecard

What NMIMS declares is a merit list, and it is not built on the test alone. The handout states that the "Merit list will consider computer based test and qualifying examination results", and puts the responsibility for the second half on the candidate: 10+2 results and a copy of the mark sheet have to be updated as soon as they are declared, a candidate who fails to update the correct 10+2 information in the online registration form is not considered for the merit list, and incorrect information found at any point cancels the admission with fees refunded under the prescribed refund rules. The sample paper's end screen tells the candidate the responses "will be collected, analysed and will be used to determine your score for the exam" and that the score "will be counted as per due weightage towards your application for your chosen course". Neither document describes a scorecard the candidate downloads, or a percentile. What the handout's dates table says reaches a candidate is a counselling call letter and a place on a school's merit list.

Attempts are capped and only the best one counts. The handout says a candidate can attempt a maximum of two retakes in a selected category, that is one main test plus two retakes, that in all a candidate is given the chance to appear a total of 3 times, and that "the highest marks among the total attempts will be considered for respective school merit process". It adds a restriction that shapes how the first attempt should be used: once the main exam has been delivered, a new school cannot be added in the same category for a retake, though a new test category can still be added. The NPAT site states the same rule in a line, that a candidate can take one main attempt and two retakes and the highest score of the three is considered.

Scores you need

Cutoff

No NPAT cut-off is published in advance, and the handout says as much in its own words: "The decision regarding the cut-off of the merit list will solely lie with SVKM's NMIMS." There is no sectional qualifying mark in the document and no score-to-programme mapping. The SAT and ACT instruction sheet, which runs a parallel merit process at the same schools, is equally direct about timing, stating that "Cut off marks will be declared at the time of admission only" and that NMIMS reserves the right to decide the school-wise merit cut-off subject to intake and vacant seat availability.

Getting a seat

Counselling and seat allotment

What the 2026-27 handout fixes for this category is a single line in its dates table: the counselling call letter and the merit list declaration for NPAT, NCET, NLAT and MST would have their dates declared in the first week of June. Every more detailed thing the document says about counselling is scoped to a different category. The campus counselling round it describes, held at the Indore, Hyderabad and Chandigarh campuses in June so that candidates for those three campuses would not have to travel to the Mumbai campus, sits under a heading reading "Counseling & Admission process of Engineering for Indore / Hyderabad / Chandigarh Campus seats", and the selection-process paragraph about candidates being called for counselling on their merit and given a specialisation there opens "For Engineering". The same starred block promises a first-week-of-June schedule for the Mumbai, Shirpur and Navi Mumbai campuses, and Shirpur is not one of the campuses the NPAT site lists at all.

So the schedule an NPAT candidate actually works to is their school's own dated sheet, published separately and later. The same School of Liberal Arts sheet declares its first merit list after 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday 23 June 2026, closes payment of admission fees and document upload on 28 June 2026, commences the course on Monday 13 July 2026 and closes admission on Wednesday 29 July 2026. The unified round announced for June 2026 sits over all of those.

Two conditions apply to what happens after that. The handout says a programme will start only if 20 candidates have taken admission, and that if 20 do not, the tuition fees of the students already admitted are refunded, or those students are offered admission to other programmes based on seat availability. It also says canvassing in any form for admission will disqualify the candidature. On the same theme, the NPAT site carries a notice that the university "DOES NOT have any management quota for admissions" and "DOES NOT authorise any third-party agency or individual to represent NMIMS for direct admissions", and asks candidates to report suspicious activity on its toll-free number.

Where it is accepted

Participating institutes

An NPAT score is read inside SVKM's NMIMS and nowhere else. The schools that read it are the ones named against NPAT programmes in the eligibility table of the 2026-27 handout: the Anil Surendra Modi School of Commerce and School of Commerce, the Sarla Anil Modi School of Economics and School of Economics, the School of Branding and Advertising, the Jyoti Dalal School of Liberal Arts, the Pravin Dalal School of Entrepreneurship and Family Business Management, and the Center for International Studies. The campuses those schools admit to through NPAT are Mumbai, Bengaluru, Navi Mumbai, Hyderabad, Indore, Chandigarh and Ahmedabad.

The engineering, pharmacy, mathematics and law schools appear in the same handout under the other categories, and the law school runs a further route of its own. Its CLAT 2026 admission information handout sets out admission to the B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) and B.B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) on the basis of a CLAT 2026 score, at the Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Bengaluru, Indore, Hyderabad, Chandigarh and Ahmedabad campuses, with a minimum of 50% aggregate marks in 10+2.

Get help

Contact

The toll-free number for programme and admission queries is stable. Its opening hours are not, and a candidate can read three different versions of them without leaving NMIMS's own material. The contact block on the NPAT contact page gives 1800 102 5138 as open Monday to Saturday from 8 AM to 7 PM, and adds a boardline number, 022 4235 5555, on Monday to Saturday from 8 AM to 6 PM, with admissionenquiry@nmims.edu for email. The footer of that same page gives the identical toll-free number as open Monday to Saturday from 10.00 am to 6.00 pm, except the first and third Saturday. The handout gives it a third way: Monday to Friday except public holidays, plus the second and fourth Saturday, from 09:00 to 18:00 hrs.

Exam questions, meaning scheduling and test centres, go to Pearson, and there the number itself moves as well. On the same contact page the exam-queries block prints a support number of +91-8447435405, open 8 AM to 6 PM, while the footer below it prints a toll-free 0008004401837, open Monday through Friday from 9:00 am to 6:00 pm Indian Standard Time. Both give nmimssupport@pearson.com as the email address.

The handout adds a channel neither block mentions: logging in to the applicant dashboard and raising a query in the "my query" section.

Source

Official links

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Disclaimer

Disclaimer

Exact dates, per-program cutoff percentages, fees, and results are per-cycle. Anything per-cycle here is stated for the cycle it names and is taken from the conducting body's own notification; confirm it on the official website before acting on it. Expertie does not conduct any exam, process applications or charge fees.

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