The National Entrance Screening Test (popularly known as NEST) is an annual college entrance examination in India, conducted for admission into the National Institute of Science Education and Research (NISER), Jatani and the Centre for Excellence in Basic Sciences (UM-DAE CEBS), Mumbai. These two institutes use NEST as a sole criterion for admission to their undergraduate programs.
2017 was the year in which NISER received highest applicants (68,544) and students appeared (approx. 47000) for NEST exam. Afterwards it's starts declining in 2018 - 44060 students appeared then in 2019 - 37510 ; 2020 - 21275 ; 2021 - 24328 students appeared for NEST exam (Source: https://www.niser.ac.in/content/annual-reports, official annual reports published by NISER on its official website) . For about approx. 100 Unreserved seats out of 202 in NISER, one can get admission upto 400-700 general rank (cutoff vary year on year) in NEST Exam till last round. This is due to the fact many candidates choose to prefer other career option like Engineering, Medical, Natural Science at IISc or IISERs, etc.
The NEST question paper has five sections. The first section, which is compulsory for all candidates, includes general questions. The next four sections includes questions on (1) Biology, (2) Chemistry, (3) Mathematics and (4) Physics. Candidates can attempt all the four sections out of which the best three will be taken to calculate the final marks and percentile. All sections carry equal marks (17 questions as of 2022) and has sectional cutoff. The questions are aimed at testing the Conceptual understanding and analytic ability of the candidates. The questions are of objective type with four answers given for each question, for 12 questions there may only be one relatively correct answer for each which fetches 2.5 marks. Wrong answers are awarded -1 marks. Remaining 5 questions have multiple correct options for partially correct or incorrect answers students are awarded 0 marks and for completely correct 4 marks.
The number of students taking the examination has been increasing since it was first conducted in 2007. In 2020 200+2 seats were for NISER and 45+2 seats for UM-DAE CBS. About 21,275 students appeared in the exam. The exam was conducted in two sittings. 9hrs to 12:30hrs and 14hrs to 17:30hrs.
The availability of seats in recent years is as given in table below:
| Institute | Intake (2007) | Intake (2008) | Intake (2009) | Intake (2010) | Intake (2011) | Intake (2012) | Intake (2013) | Intake (2014) | Intake (2020) | Intake (2021) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| National Institute of Science Education and Research (NISER) | 40 | 40 | 52 | 60 | 60 | 60 | 60 | 100 | 202 | 202 |
| Centre for Excellence in Basic Sciences (UM-DAE CBS) | 20 | 12 | 35 | 35 | 35 | 35 | 35 | 35 | 59 | 59 |