UPES Legal Studies Aptitude Test(ULSAT)

About the exam

About ULSAT

ULSAT is the entrance test the University of Petroleum and Energy Studies runs for its own School of Law in Dehradun, and UPES admits on it to its own programmes only. Two things about it are unusual enough to change how you plan. There is no single published exam date, because the candidate picks one inside the application dashboard. And UPES publishes several ways into the same law seats that skip the test altogether, each with its own numeric bar.

ULSAT gates fewer programmes than its reputation suggests. The UPES ULSAT 2026 admission alert is headed LL.B. Admissions 2026 and describes the process for five-year LL.B. admissions only, and the programme pages for BA LL.B. (Hons.) and BBA LL.B. (Hons.) each give an examination pathway through ULSAT with a non-examination pathway through CLAT merit or board merit. The three-year LL.B. is a different route entirely: UPES states its selection criteria on the LL.B. three-year programme page as "Personal Interview", with no entrance test named. The newer BA in Artificial Intelligence and Law is a third route again, with admissions "based on performance in CUET-UG and/or Personal Interview" per the BA (AI and Law) programme page.

The postgraduate paper is a separate test with a separate name. UPES calls it ULSAT-LLM and uses it for the one-year LL.M., where the ULSAT-LLM admission alert gives the selection criteria as ULSAT-LLM or CLAT-PG.

Both papers are taken at home. The ULSAT alert page sets out an online test of two hours, with a demo test to practise on beforehand and the actual passkey sent to the registered mobile number a day before the exam date. The same page also reserves a slice of the intake for candidates who never sit it: "Up to 20% of seats shall be filled through the Board Merit/ CLAT AIR/ UL-SAT India category. In case, any seat remains vacant UPES has the right to fill such seats through ULSAT."

At a glance

ULSAT highlights

Calendar

Important dates

The date is the candidate's to pick, so no UPES calendar carries a single ULSAT exam day. UPES routes exam scheduling through the applicant dashboard: its UPES Exam Slot Booking SOP tells applicants to log in with their registered mobile number, open Exam Slot Booking, and "Select the available dates when you want to take the exam". The confirmation email carries the date, the time and the login window, and the test link arrives one day before the exam.

What is fixed is the daily window rather than the day. The ULSAT alert page states that the examination test window runs from 10 am to 2 pm, that students can log in at any point inside that timeframe, and that the timer starts when the student logs in.

For cycle status, read UPES's own labels rather than any countdown. On the UPES admission alerts page, the LL.B. 5-Year Admissions and LL.M. Admissions blocks that carry the ULSAT and ULSAT-LLM names are both marked "Admission Closed for Session 2026", and the Results Declaration box on the ULSAT alert page reads "To be announced." The UPES admission portal form, meanwhile, asks a new applicant to pick an Academic Year of either 2026 or 2027, so the next cycle is the one to apply against.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

UPES sets a low academic floor and does most of its filtering later. The floor differs by programme, and one timing rule cuts across all of them.

For the five-year programmes taken through ULSAT, the ULSAT alert page requires a minimum of 50% marks in Class X and Class XII, with no stream condition attached.

For the LL.M. through ULSAT-LLM, the ULSAT-LLM alert page requires a minimum of 50% marks in Class X and Class XII and a minimum of 50% marks in graduation with an LL.B. degree, or equivalent. The LL.M. admissions page states the same bar and confirms the programme runs for one year.

For the three-year LL.B., the LL.B. three-year programme page asks for a minimum of 50% marks in Class X, Class XII and graduation in any stream, and then selects on a personal interview rather than on ULSAT.

Candidates still waiting on a board result are not shut out. The LL.B. admissions page answers the question directly: "Yes, you are allowed to take the LL.B. entrance exam provisionally, but you must submit proof of your secondary examination qualification at the time of counselling."

The Routes That Skip ULSAT, and Where Their Numbers Disagree

The routes that skip ULSAT carry numbers, and two of those numbers appear twice with different values on UPES's own pages. Read both before assuming you qualify.

Start with CLAT. The ULSAT alert page sets a CLAT AIR (General) ranking up to 20000, with minimum 50% marks in Class X and XII, in its Selection Criteria box, then exempts candidates holding minimum 50% marks in Class X and XII and a CLAT AIR ranking up to 15000 in its Non-Exam Pathway box lower down the same page. The LL.B. admissions page and the UPES important dates page both give 20000.

Board merit splits the same way. The ULSAT alert page asks for 75% in Class X and XII across five main subjects with English compulsory, and the LL.B. admissions page repeats that 75%. The important dates page and the admission alerts page both set the same board-merit route at 60%.

Two further routes carry a single figure each. The UPES admission alerts page puts direct admission for undergraduate and integrated programmes, other than the three-year LL.B., at 60 percentile or above in CUET-UG, and says candidates who meet it are exempted from the personal interview round or the UPES entrance exam. For the LL.M., the same page sets the non-exam pathway at a minimum score of 60 in CLAT-PG, alongside an academic-scores route needing 60% in Class X and XII and 60% in graduation.

LSAT-India sits in an odd half-state on the same pages. The LL.B. admissions page lists valid entrance exam scorecards among the documents for admission and names CLAT and LSAT-India as examples, and the ULSAT alert page names a "UL-SAT India" category once, inside the sentence capping the non-exam pool. Neither page sets a score, a percentile or a band for it, so there is no LSAT-India bar to qualify against the way there is for CLAT and the boards.

Step by step

Application process and fee

One application fee covers the whole UPES process, exam route or not. The How to Apply page puts it at Rs 1750, paid at the point of application, and the LL.B. admissions page repeats the figure for candidates applying online at the admission portal or offline at the admission office.

Declaring your route is part of the form. Under "Your Mode of Application", the UPES admission portal offers Through UPES Entrance Exam or Through Non Exam, and choosing the non-exam route opens fields for the exam type and the exam score.

UPES lists the documents it wants at application on the How to Apply page: Class X and Class XII marksheets, a national-level exam score where one exists, a migration or transfer certificate, the student's Aadhaar card, and PAN cards for the student and parents. Postgraduate applicants add consolidated graduation marks. Applicants claiming Uttarakhand domicile add a domicile certificate and parents' income tax return.

Booking the exam is a second, separate step after the form. The exam slot booking guide has applicants pick their date and then "Select Program Preference 1 and 2 (Both should be different)", so the preference pair is locked at booking rather than after the result.

Before the exam

Admit card and exam day

ULSAT has no admit card to download. The ULSAT-LLB Candidate Guide, published by UPES on the ULSAT alert page, lists the login credentials as the application number, the date of birth in DD/MM/YY form, and a passkey sent to the registered email address and mobile a day before the scheduled exam. UPES warns on the alert page that this passkey is not the demo-test passkey.

Identity is checked inside the exam window rather than at a gate. The candidate guide gives two ways to supply a government photo ID, by photographing the card or uploading it from the system, and the assessment will not start if the candidate's face is not detected.

Because no invigilator is in the room, the rules that stand in for one are unusually detailed. Full-screen mode is mandatory, and a candidate who tries to switch the window is automatically logged out in 15 seconds. The system flags multiple faces, window switches, multiple logins and objects such as a mobile phone, and the guide bans bottles, pens, paper, gadgets, calculators, notebooks and headphones from the desk, along with the backspace and refresh keys. It also asks candidates to start the system 15 minutes before the scheduled time, and warns that nobody will be allowed to appear after it.

Structure

Exam pattern

The two ULSAT papers run to the same clock and the same marking rule, and to different section sets.

The negative-marking answer is worth pinning down, because it lives in the candidate guides and not on the public alert pages. Both guides put the question and answer in one line: "Is there any negative marking?" followed by "No". That makes a guess costless on every one of the LL.B. paper's questions.

Two clock details matter more than they look. The guides define the duration as "2 hours from the time of login", so logging in at noon leaves two hours, not until 2 pm. And the login window is bounded at both ends: "The time will be counted as and when the Candidate starts the test. No Candidate will be able to access the test beyond the mentioned timelines."

What to study

Syllabus

UPES publishes section names and question counts, and stops there. The ULSAT alert page's Exam Pattern box names the five LL.B. sections and gives 30 questions to each, and the ULSAT-LLM alert page names Constitutional Law, Jurisprudence, Other law subjects and the Statement of Purpose with their counts. Neither page, and neither candidate guide, carries a topic list, a reading list or a difficulty statement under any of those section names.

The Statement of Purpose is the one component that is not a multiple-choice question, and the ULSAT-LLM page counts it as a single item inside the paper rather than as a separate submission.

How to prepare

Preparation and books

Preparation, in UPES's own published material, means one thing: a demo test. Both alert pages carry a "Take a Demo Test" link and recommend that students take it "to gain practice and resolve any queries before the actual examination", with the LL.B. and LL.M. demos on separate links.

The candidate guide's one concrete instruction about practising is about hardware rather than content: write the real exam on the same desktop, laptop or phone used for the mock test, so that any problem has already surfaced and been resolved in the system-check test. The guide also names a system-check page for confirming that the webcam and microphone work, and requires the latest version of Google Chrome.

What that rehearses is the software, not the syllabus. Neither ULSAT alert page nor either candidate guide attaches a reading list or a released question paper to the exam.

Where it is held

Exam centres

There are no ULSAT exam centres. The candidate guide states that students write the examination on their own laptop or desktop at the specified time, that webcam connectivity is compulsory, and that the room should be quiet with a plain wall behind the candidate and no source of light behind them. It suggests a phone hotspot as a backup connection where broadband is unreliable.

Physical locations enter the process only at the interview stage. The admission alerts page lists UPES Experience Centres at New Delhi, Noida, Indore, Jaipur, Kota, Guwahati, Lucknow and Kochi for offline personal interviews, held weekly from Monday to Friday, with an online interview option on the same weekly pattern.

After the exam

Answer key

Nothing UPES publishes lets a ULSAT candidate check which answers were counted. Between the exam process box and the results declaration line, neither alert page offers a provisional key, and nowhere on either is there a stated route for challenging a question or a response sheet to check against. The candidate guides do not fill that gap: their scheme-of-test and login questions run straight into troubleshooting for webcam, audio and submission errors.

Scores

Result and scorecard

ULSAT produces an admission decision rather than a scorecard. UPES's result checking guide has candidates log in to the applicant dashboard and open Result/Offer Letter, where the outcome reads either "Provisionally Selected", in which case the offer letter can be viewed and downloaded, or one of "On Hold / Criteria Not Met / Rejected".

There is no published rank list, no percentile and no sectional score breakdown. The guide moves straight from the offer letter to a Pay Now button and a choice of payment gateway, with a downloadable receipt once payment goes through.

Timing is not announced in advance either. The Results Declaration box on the ULSAT alert page reads "To be announced.", and the ULSAT-LLM page's equivalent box says the date is to be announced.

Scores you need

Cutoff

Every published bar in UPES law admissions belongs to a route that replaces the test rather than to the test itself: the CLAT all-India rank ceiling, the board-merit percentage, the CUET-UG percentile and the CLAT-PG score set out above. For ULSAT there is no qualifying score anywhere on a UPES page, nothing sectional, and no closing score carried over from an earlier cycle. So the only bars a law applicant can plan against are the ones for not sitting ULSAT.

The one quantity attached to the exam route runs the other way, as a cap on the exemptions. The LL.B. admissions page and the ULSAT alert page both hold the board-merit and CLAT-AIR intake to up to 20% of seats and give UPES the right to fill any seat left vacant in that pool through ULSAT; the BA LL.B. (Hons.) and BBA LL.B. (Hons.) pages state the 20% cap without that second clause.

Getting a seat

Counselling and seat allotment

UPES admits to its own seats directly, so a ULSAT candidate never enters a counselling authority's allotment process. The How to Apply page describes the sequence after the form: UPES sends an SMS to the registered number for the entrance exam or personal interview, the candidate registers a preferred date and time slot, and the result follows on registered contact details.

The interview is a real step, not a formality to skip past. The interview slot booking guide has candidates choose an offline or online mode, pick a location and date, give an alternate mobile number, and download a response sheet to fill in and carry to the venue. The CUET-UG direct-admission route is defined by what it removes: it exempts a qualifying candidate from the personal interview round or the UPES entrance exam.

Accepting the seat is a payment against a deadline. The How to Apply page states that a provisional offer letter is issued and that candidates must pay the acceptance fee to reserve or block their seat before the offer expiry date.

Withdrawing after that runs on a written policy rather than on negotiation. UPES takes withdrawal requests through the UPES Fee Refund Portal, which opens on the application number and carries a fee refund policy, a hostel refund policy and a transport refund policy as separate documents. The fee refund policy published there, recommended by the Registrar and approved by the Vice Chancellor, returns the whole semester fee less a flat processing charge up to a cut-off in August, steps the refund down in bands through September and the first half of October, and allows nothing after that except the security deposit, where the full semester fee had been paid. It also treats a student who took a scholarship and then withdraws as a non-scholarship student for the purpose of that calculation.

The ULSAT alert page's own refund line is shorter and points at the same authority, saying UPES follows UGC guidelines for refunds.

Where it is accepted

Participating institutes

UPES School of Law in Dehradun is the only place a ULSAT score is worth anything, and the university runs it across two campuses, Kandoli and Bidholi, both off Prem Nagar in Dehradun.

The seats behind those programmes are regulated by the Bar Council of India, and UPES publishes the approval letter it holds under BCI Approval on its mandatory disclosures page. That letter extends provisional approval of affiliation for a single academic year at a time, covers the three-year LL.B. and both five-year honours degrees, and counts each one's intake in sections of students rather than as a single figure.

UPES puts its own number on the same seats in the data it files with the Ministry of Education, and republishes those filings on its NIRF ranking report page. Its NIRF 2026 law submission declares a sanctioned approved intake of 380 for the five-year law programmes and 60 for the one-year postgraduate law programme in academic year 2024-25, against 300 five-year seats two years earlier.

Within the two ULSAT programmes, UPES offers the honours specialisations as named tracks. The LL.B. admissions page lists Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Corporate Law, Taxation Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Energy and Environmental Law, Banking and Insolvency Laws, International Economic Law, Disruptive Technologies Law, Industrial Relations Law and the Constitution, Fashion Law and Sports Law. The LL.M. runs its own set: Environmental and Energy Law, Corporate and Commercial Law, Cybersecurity and Digital Law, Intellectual Property Rights, and Alternative Dispute Resolution.

Get help

Contact

One line covers the whole admission process, and the same line covers a crisis mid-exam. The ULSAT alert page gives a toll-free number, 18001028737, open from 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM, along with the email address enrollments@upes.ac.in for queries and clarifications. The candidate guides repeat both as the support helpline during the assessment itself.

Two failure modes get their own instruction rather than a phone call. If the connection drops at submission, the guide says not to refresh or close the browser, because answers submit automatically once the internet returns. If submission fails outright, it asks candidates to email their application number, name, course and exam name, and the question and answer number, to the same address from their registered mail ID, with a screenshot.

Source

Official links

Read this

Disclaimer

Disclaimer

As of 2026, ULSAT is active. UPES admits through ULSAT alongside CLAT, CUET-UG, LSAT India and board-merit routes. Exact dates, answer keys, results, cutoffs and Personal Interview dates are per-cycle, and UPES publishes a Personal Interview round rather than a group discussion. 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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