Everything You Need To Know About National Talent Search Examination (NTSE)

What is NTSE?

NTSE stands for National Talent Search Examination and as the name suggests it is a national level scholarship exam conducted every year to recognize the bright students across India. The exam is conducted in two stages -

1. State Level Exam, more popularly known as Level 1, is conducted by State or Union Territory
2. National Level Exam or Level 2 exam conducted at the national level

What is the exam pattern and syllabus for NTSE?

State Level exam or Level 1 exam has two parts

1. Mental Ability Test (MAT) – Total 90 questions
2. Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) – Total 90 questions out of which 35 are from Social Science, 35 are from Science and 20 are from Mathematics.

Students who qualify in Level 1 exam are passed on to level 2 exam or national level exam conducted by NCERT. Around 4000 total students are selected from Level 1 exam from entire country (according to state quota). National Level exam again comprises of two parts

1. Mental Ability Test (MAT) – Total 100 questions
2. Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) – Total 100 questions out of which 35 are from Social Science, 35 are from Science, 20 are from Maths and remaining 10 from all the above.

What is the eligibility for taking NTSE?

When is it conducted?

NTSE Level 1 is usually conducted in the month of November

NTSE Level 2 is usually conducted in the month of May

How do we prepare for NTSE?

Each question in NTSE MAT has 4 options, out of which one is correct. The purpose of MAT is to judge their power of reasoning, ability to think, ability to judge, evaluate or discriminate, ability to visualize in the space, spatial orientation, etc among students. A variety of questions e.g. analogies, classification, series, pattern perception, hidden figures, coding-decoding, block assembly, problem solving etc. are used for this purpose. Check the link at end of this article for sample questions and solutions.

Questions in SAT are also simple MCQs, however some questions are of different types like matching type, arrange the sequence, true and false statements and questions based on passages. These questions test the depth of knowledge in subjects covering Mathematics, History, Geography, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and other topics in Social Science. Again, check the example questions from the official guide from NCERT

Heres the official guide from NCERT – Learn About the Test

You can also refer to lot of books for studying for NTSE. One should always start from NCERT books and then check out books like Tata McGraw Hills, Pearson Longman, S. Chand, Arihant etc.