Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra

A first-year B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) student on the Kurukshetra University campus is billed Rs 1,02,237 for two semesters, while a B.A. student elsewhere on the same campus, at the university's own Institute of Integrated and Honors Studies, pays tuition of Rs 120 a month. Both hold places at the same university, as does a student at any of its 293 affiliated colleges and institutes.

Kurukshetra University is Haryana's oldest university and stood 35th among state public universities in the 2025 national ranking. For an applicant, the useful question is not whether to apply to KUK but to which part of it, because each part has a different admitting authority, fee sheet and merit rule.

Kurukshetra University was established in 1956 as a Sanskrit University under the State Legislature's Act XII of 1956, and has since grown into a multidisciplinary university on the western bank of the Brahm Sarovar. Its Handbook of Information for 2026 undergraduate admissions puts the campus at about 473 acres and describes 134 regular UG and PG programmes run through 49 departments and institutes, plus a network of 293 affiliated colleges and institutes spread across eight districts of Haryana.

Its foundation stone was laid by Dr. Rajendra Prasad, then President of India, according to the Kurukshetra district administration's page on the university.

The same 2026 handbook dates the Jawaharlal Nehru Library to 11th January, 1957, and the Centre for Distance and Online Education to 1976. The Vice-Chancellor's message in it calls KUK the progenitor of four state universities, and the admission portal repeats his claim that it is the only one of 15 state universities in Haryana with an A++ grade from the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC).

Three Different Kurukshetra Universities for an Applicant

The first is the set of University Teaching Departments and institutes, abbreviated UTD in every KUK notice, including the University Institute of Engineering and Technology (UIET). These run the professional and integrated bachelor's programmes, the campus master's programmes and the Ph.D.

The second is the Institute of Integrated and Honors Studies (IIHS), described in its prospectus for 2026-27 as the erstwhile University College. This is where the campus B.A., B.Sc. and B.Com. sit, with 450 seats in its Scheme-A B.A. alone, and it runs its own admissions calendar and fee sheet apart from the departments.

The third is the affiliated colleges. First-year undergraduate places there are filled through a state portal rather than KUK's own. The Haryana Higher Education Department's admission guidelines for the 2026-27 session require every Government, Aided and Self-Financing college in the state to admit UG first-year students through one centralised online portal, while fee structure, subject allocation and refunds follow "State Govt/University norms". B.Ed. places in the colleges of education work differently, because KUK allots those itself, as the Admissions section explains.

UTD fees for bachelor's and integrated programmes are printed per programme in the 2026-27 fee table of the UG handbook. The amount due at admission covers first-semester tuition plus a separate block of other funds and fees, and the second semester adds tuition only, so the yearly figure is lower than twice the admission payment.

AEDP stands for Apprenticeship Embedded Degree Programme. The handbook describes these as three-year degrees with one year of paid apprenticeship in industry in the third year. The five-year MBA's semester tuition is Rs 28,687 in each of the first three years and Rs 33,687 in the fourth and fifth, and applying costs Rs 1200 per programme (Rs 300 for SC, BC and differently abled candidates of Haryana), with Rs 500 for each extra programme.

IIHS bills in small pieces instead. Its prospectus sets tuition for the three-year degree at Rs 120 a month, alongside annual charges such as a Rs 500 registration fee, a Rs 1600 examination fee for two semesters and a Rs 1000 refundable security. Its self-financing programmes carry a flat annual fee on top of that: Rs 25,000 for BCA, BCA (Artificial Intelligence) and Bachelor of Tourism and Travel Management, and Rs 60,000 for the B.Sc. Medical Lab Technology under AEDP.

A two-year B.Ed. costs different amounts depending on which institution allots the seat. The B.Ed. prospectus 2026 sets first-year dues at Rs 27,730 at the Institute of Teacher Training and Research (ITTR) and the government-aided colleges for students registered with KUK, built on a tuition fee of Rs 20,960, against Rs 44,000 at the self-financing colleges of education.

For Indian students, departmental master's fees are not in the UG handbook; they belong to the separate PG handbook, HBI-UTD-PG-2026, which the M.Com. merit list names as its governing document. The only master's rates the UG handbook does print are for international students: a self-financed international student pays Rs 77,000 a year for an M.A. or M.Com. and Rs 88,000 for an M.Sc. Fees for B.A. or B.Com. at an affiliated college are set by that college under state and university norms, and the state guidelines list "Tuition Fee of all Girl Students is Zero" among the fee instructions for colleges admitting through the portal.

Who selects you, and on what, depends on both the programme and the institution that teaches it. CUET-UG does not appear in the UTD undergraduate handbook or in the IIHS prospectus.

Undergraduate Seats on Campus

Chapter 6 of the UG handbook states that every UTD undergraduate and integrated programme except ITEP admits on marks in the qualifying examination and applicable weightage, with a maximum of 5 marks for NCC, NSS, Youth Red Cross or youth festival certificates. Two merit lists are followed by a final list, for which a candidate not yet admitted must mark attendance online with a Rs 100 fee. Ties are broken on Class 12 percentage, then Class 10, then age.

Three programmes do not fit that description. The admission portal carries 2026 entrance test results for BBA (Hons.), the five-year integrated MBA and the B.A. LL.B. (Hons.), each signed in June with marks awarded out of a maximum, so an applicant to any of the three should expect a test even though the handbook's merit chapter does not list one.

Seats follow the Haryana pattern in the handbook's reservation chapter: 15% of sanctioned intake is All India Open Category and 85% is the state quota for bona fide Haryana residents, split equally between Haryana Open General and the reserved categories. On top of the sanctioned seats sit 15% supernumerary seats for international students and a further 15% under the KG to PG Scheme for students of the University Senior Secondary Model School on campus, who also gain 0.5 merit points for each year studied there.

Postgraduate Seats on Campus

Many campus master's programmes select through entrance tests, and the admission portal lists results for courses as far apart as M.Sc. Mathematics and LL.M. The M.A. History entrance result records a test held on 02-07-2026 for a maximum of 100 marks, and the M.Com. first merit list prints entrance roll numbers against each selected name and refers applicants to HBI-UTD-PG-2026. The MBA, both budgeted and self-financing, adds a group discussion and personal interview schedule after its test. The two-year MBA's schedule also warns that anyone absent from the common entrance exam cannot sit the group discussion. Whether a CUET-PG score counts for any master's programme is a rule of HBI-UTD-PG-2026, so check that handbook before relying on one.

B.Ed. Counselling for the Whole Region

KUK runs three online counselling rounds on its own B.Ed. portal for ITTR, two government-aided colleges and the self-financing colleges of education affiliated to it, after which colleges fill leftover seats physically. The B.Ed. prospectus builds merit on the qualifying degree, taking the higher of the bachelor's or master's percentage, and multiplies CGPA by 9 when no conversion formula is supplied. Its self-financing list runs to 88 colleges, from Bharat College of Education at Kurukshetra to Brahamrishi College of Education at Pinjore, and the application fee is Rs 1400 (Rs 350 for SC, BC and differently abled candidates of Haryana).

For its teaching departments KUK posts no cutoff table. It posts programme-wise merit lists, many of them scanned images, so the closing figure has to be read from the last name admitted in each category.

The M.Com. list has readable text, and its selected names carry entrance test roll numbers. In the first merit list for 2026-27, the last selected candidate in each category stood as follows.

These are first-list figures, and later lists and physical counselling can admit candidates below them. By the notice of 4.9.2026, M.Com. still had 12 vacant seats open to physical counselling on 07.09.2026.

That notice is the clearest view of where demand fell short. It lists 51 UTD programmes with seats still vacant in September, among them 39 in M.Sc. Mathematics, 31 in M.Sc. Electronics, 28 in M.Sc. Home Science (Human Development), 23 in M.A. Sanskrit, 21 each in M.Sc. Physics and M.A. Yoga, and 45 in B.Com. B.Ed., which could be filled only on NCET scores. Several other rows were open to one category only, such as M.Sc. Microbiology and M.Sc. Biotechnology for SC candidates. For a candidate who missed the earlier lists, that notice was the real last chance: an eligible applicant could still take one of those seats on 07.09.2026 by paying a Rs 1500 late fee, according to the same notice.

KUK's placement figures come from its own NIRF 2025 data submission and cover the university's programmes, not its affiliated colleges. The Centre for Training, Internships and Employment has replaced the old Placement Cell, according to the UG handbook.

Placement rates split sharply by stream. Most four-year and five-year undergraduates are recorded as placed, but only about a quarter of three-year graduates are, and more of that cohort went on to higher studies than into jobs.

The two-year master's stream has improved on both counts. Placed graduates rose from 494 of 2,292 in 2021-22 to 770 of 2,636 in 2022-23 and 944 of 2,547 in 2023-24, and the median moved from Rs 4,00,000 to Rs 3,75,000 and then Rs 4,75,000, per the NIRF submission. The jump in higher studies, from 185 to 1,103 in a single year, is not explained in the return.

No recruiter list, highest package or department-wise placement report for the latest graduating year appears in the campus admission documents.

For the university as a whole, sanctioned intake in 2023-24 was 1,465 in three-year UG programmes, 660 in four-year UG, 120 in five-year UG, 207 in one-year PG, 3,070 in two-year PG, 25 in three-year PG and 152 in PG-Integrated, according to the NIRF 2025 submission. The two-year PG figure was 3,163 the year before.

Programme-wise seats for the UTD undergraduate list are printed in the UG handbook, each with its category split.

At IIHS, the prospectus gives 450 B.A. seats and 120 in B.Sc. Life Sciences, with subject caps inside them, such as 210 for English and 100 for History in the B.A. The B.Ed. intake varies by college: 150 at ITTR, 250 at Sohan Lal DAV College of Education in Ambala City and 150 at Dr. Ganesh Dass D.A.V. College of Education for Women in Karnal, with self-financing colleges approved for between 50 and 300, per the B.Ed. prospectus.

The campus draws well beyond Haryana at master's level. In the NIRF 2025 submission, the two-year PG programmes counted 5,631 students, 3,627 of them women and 1,915 from outside the state, and 30 from outside India.

In NIRF 2025, Kurukshetra University ranked 35th in the State Public University category with a score of 53.56. It is also listed, unscored, in the University ranking's band just below the top hundred.

Graduation outcomes are KUK's strongest parameter at 82.33 and research its weakest at 31.18, in the same table. That graduation score sits beside unusually large higher-studies numbers in KUK's own data return, where 988 of the 1,368 three-year graduates of 2023-24 went on to further study. Among Haryana's ranked state universities, KUK falls between GJUST Hisar at 32nd and MDU Rohtak at 46th in the same list.

The 2025 rank remains the latest: as of September 2026, the ranking body has not posted a 2026 State Public University list.

The Jawaharlal Nehru Library is the campus's biggest shared space. Its section in the UG handbook gives 1,14,205 sq. feet, 414653 books and 15,678 manuscripts, opening from 9.00 a.m. to 12.00 midnight every day except five holidays, with a reading hall of 120 seats open 24x7. The same handbook states the library's seating three ways, as 1,750, 1,300 and 1955, so treat any one figure loosely.

Two national facilities, the Ion Beam Centre and the Low Temperature Thermochronology Centre, are on campus, along with research centres on the River Saraswati, earthquake studies and advanced materials. The university's Dharohar museum of Haryana heritage, opened on April 28, 2006, had about 33,73,794 visitors up to January 2026, per the handbook.

Sports carry weight here. The handbook records that KUK won the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Trophy in 1966-67 and finished 13th of 232 universities in the Khelo India University Games, and lists a swimming pool, a double-storey shooting range, two multipurpose halls and a 400 metre grassy athletic track. The NIRF submission shows capital spending on new laboratory equipment of Rs 3,63,90,060 in 2023-24, up from Rs 44,98,298 in 2021-22.

Hostel

KUK has 25 hostels, 11 for men, one for foreign male students and 13 for women, with room for 2844 men and 3454 women; 12 of them run their own mess and the rest use contractual messes, according to the UG handbook. Rooms are allotted on the department's admission merit list, with 20% reserved for SC students. Students admitted to certificate, diploma, advanced diploma or PG diploma programmes may not get hostel places at all in 2026-27. B.Ed. students at ITTR apply for a room offline through the institute, per the B.Ed. prospectus. For Indian students the UG handbook prints no hostel fee and sends applicants to the Chief Wardens' offices for it; the one rate it does give is Rs 5,000 a month, excluding electricity and meals, for international students.

The NIRF 2025 submission lists 735 faculty members. It also records 833 full-time and 47 part-time doctoral students on roll, with 194 full-time Ph.D. graduates in 2023-24.

Sponsored research funding is uneven from year to year. The university reported 69 sponsored projects bringing in Rs 98,38,356 in 2021-22, nine projects and Rs 74,84,366 in 2022-23, and 21 projects worth Rs 4,43,43,569 in 2023-24, per the same return. Consultancy earned Rs 32,96,000 in 2023-24.

The UG handbook cites the Researgence database for 507 papers published in 2025, 387 of them in Scopus and Web of Science journals, and an H-index of 105. It also reports 113 Ph.D. degrees awarded in 2025 across ten faculties, a figure for a different year and on a different basis from the 194 in the NIRF return.

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