National Eligibility Test (NET) is a national level exam conducted by the University Grants Commission (UGC) for the post graduate students who wish do their Ph.D or for those who wish to pursue a University level teaching profession. The exam is conducted for the various subject candidates such as Humanities, Social Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Home Science, Forensic Science, Computer Science and Applications, Electronic Science, Languages and so on. By qualifying the NET exam, the candidates become eligible for Lectureship, Junior Research Fellowship, Senior Research Fellowship, Subject wise CSIR-NET, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee (SPM) Fellowship, etc. The exam is highly competitive and hence only by thorough preparation one can clear the test.

Syllabus for NET Exam

NET exam consists of 3 sections, 2 objective sections and 1 descriptive section. Paper I is common for all subject candidates and will mainly consists of questions from

• Teaching and Research Aptitude
• Quantitative Reasoning
• General Aptitude
• Elementary basics of Computer Science
• General Science
• General Knowledge
• Current Affairs

Paper II & III will be separate for each subject candidates and will comprise of questions from the respective subject areas.

Question Pattern of NET

Paper I is a general section common to all candidates containing objective type multiple choice questions. It will consist of 60 questions of 2 marks each; among which the candidate has to answer only 50 questions within time duration of 75 minutes. The main purpose of this paper is to evaluate the candidate’s teaching/research aptitude, reasoning ability, divergent thinking and general awareness.

Paper II is separate for candidates based on their chosen subject. It comprises of 50 objective type questions each carrying 2 marks which have to be answered within 75 minutes. The questions will be from the core subject the candidate has selected. This section is mainly to judge the basic knowledge of the candidate in the subject.

Paper III consists of descriptive type questions which is also different for each subject candidates. This section consists of 2 essays of 20 marks each, 3 analytical/ evaluative questions of 15 marks each, 9 definitional/ short answer type questions of 10 marks each and 5 text based questions of 5 marks each. In total, the candidate has to answer 19 questions of 200 marks within 150 minutes. This section is mainly to evaluate the candidate’s aptitude to reason & hold an argument on the subject matter, to examine ones ability to dwell on the point at an optimal level, to analyze the ability to understand and express the fact and to check the critical thinking and skill to formulate the concepts.