NBHM Scholarship: Pay, Eligibility, Cut-offs and Past-Paper Check

The NBHM scholarship pays ₹8,000 a month for up to two years at Master's level. At doctoral level it pays ₹37,000 a month for two years and ₹42,000 after that, plus a ₹40,000 yearly contingency grant. As of October 2026 these are the terms in NBHM's 2026 advertisement. The board's scheme page says the 2027 edition is likely to be similar.

Source for amounts and tenure: NBHM 2026 advertisement. The last row is our calculation over the initial four-year doctoral award and excludes any extension.

Both scholarships are open only to Indian nationals and are paid through your institution. The application fee in the 2026 cycle was ₹400 for one scholarship and ₹700 for both.

The older NBHM page on the DAE site still shows ₹31,000 and ₹35,000 a month for PhD scholars. Those figures are out of date; the 2026 advertisement above applies.

₹8,000 is modest, so the larger prize is the doctoral award. If you are weighing PhD funding routes such as the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and University Grants Commission National Eligibility Test (CSIR-UGC NET), our guide to GATE Mathematics vs CSIR-NET for IIT PhD compares them.

No. A bachelor's degree in mathematics is not a precondition. The scholarship depends on the programme you are enrolled in, not the subject of your first degree. NBHM's 2026 FAQ says a physics or engineering graduate can apply for a qualifying Master's programme.

A qualifying programme is a recognised full-time programme at an accredited Indian university or institution. The degree name must contain "Mathematics", "Statistics" or "Mathematical Science(s)". Applied Mathematics qualifies. A "Master's programme" here means any of these (advertisement, section 3):

• A two-year Master's that requires a bachelor's degree.
• The last two years of a five-year integrated Master's.
• The first two years of an Integrated PhD that requires a bachelor's degree.

Sources: advertisement, sections 3 to 6 and 2026 FAQ.

You can run this check yourself. Read the exact degree name on your admission letter. If it contains one of the three words and the programme is full-time, you pass. If it does not, you fail the standard definition.

If you have not yet secured an MSc seat, entrance routes such as the Joint Admission Test for Masters run by the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT JAM) are covered in What Is IIT JAM and Where Can It Lead?

NBHM holds one written test, then interviews shortlisted candidates online. Final selection rests mainly on the test and interview and may also consider your academic record. You choose Master's, Doctoral or both when you apply (advertisement, sections 1 and 6).

Every candidate gets two scores:

• M-score: your raw score.
• D-score: a weighted score in which the advanced sections count more.

NBHM announces a cut-off for each. The shortlist rules are:

• Doctoral shortlist: you applied for the Doctoral Scholarship and your D-score meets the D cut-off.
• Master's shortlist: you applied for the Master's Scholarship and either your M-score meets the M cut-off or your D-score meets the D cut-off.

The test is useful beyond the stipend. Several institutes use its scores to screen applicants to their PhD, Integrated PhD or Master's programmes: Harish-Chandra Research Institute; the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research at Berhampur, Bhopal, Mohali, Pune and Thiruvananthapuram; the National Institute of Science Education and Research; the Kerala School of Mathematics; Krea University; and The Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc). Each institute decides how it uses the score, so ask it directly.

In the 2026 cycle the portal opened on 3 December 2025 and closed on 25 December after an extension from 21 December. The test was on 24 January 2026, interviews were in March and final results came on 30 April 2026 (scheme page). As of October 2026, NBHM lists the 2027 test as tentatively Saturday 30 January 2027.

As of 4 October 2026, NBHM has not published a 2027 advertisement. The 2026 portal opened on 3 December 2025, so expect applications around early December 2026 (our inference). Check the IMSc scheme page for the official notice.

The paper has 40 problems worth 4 marks each, in three hours, with only the final answer marked. Guessing is worth it on every short-answer problem, which has no negative marking, and only when you are more than 50% sure on a true/false assertion, which scores +2 if right and −2 if wrong. The format was identical in the combined papers of April 2023 and January 2024, 2025 and 2026 (2026 paper). NBHM warns that the pattern may change.

The formulas are M = m1 + m2 + d1 + d2, with a maximum of 160. D = m1 + m2 + 1.5 × (d1 + d2), with a maximum of 190. Both are printed on the cover page of the 2026 paper. Part D carries the more advanced problems; the 2026 paper's Part D includes a Galois extension with dihedral group D4, strictly convex Banach spaces and a deformation retraction.

Our reasoning on guessing:

• A true/false guess at even odds nets zero, so answer an assertion only when you are more than half sure.
• A wrong short answer costs nothing, so never leave one blank.
• The short-answer parts alone offer 80 + 40 = 120 marks, three times the 2025 and 2026 Master's cut-off of 40. You can reach the Master's shortlist without touching a true/false pair.

In the four combined tests from 2023 to 2026, the Master's cut-off ran from 36 to 40 out of 160, and the doctoral cut-off from 48 to 54 out of 190. As percentages of the maximum, that is 22.5% to 28.4%.

The cut-offs are from the NBHM question-paper repository. The maximum scores of 160 and 190 are printed on the cover page of the 2026 paper, and the percentages are our division of each cut-off by its maximum.

Two cautions apply. The cut-offs are set after each test from how all candidates performed, so a past figure is a guide, not a promise (2026 FAQ). And the cut-off only shortlists you; the interview decides the award.

For scale, NBHM's published 2026 selection lists contain 47 roll numbers for the Doctoral Scholarship and 29 for the Master's Scholarship. Nine appear on both, so 47 + 29 − 9 = 67 individuals. We counted the roll numbers on each list and matched them.

Linear algebra, counting and number theory, real analysis and algebra account for three-quarters of the problems. In our hand count of all 160 problems in the 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026 papers (read in October 2026), the split was as follows.

We assigned each problem to one area by its main idea. Boundary calls, such as a counting problem with an algebraic flavour, could reasonably go either way, so treat the shares as approximate. The problems are from the official papers.

Our inferences from the table:

• Counting and number theory rose from 4 problems in the April 2023 paper to 10 in each of the January 2024 and January 2026 papers. These problems rarely sit in one textbook chapter, so past papers are the practice material.
• Skipping complex analysis and topology removes 15 + 12 = 27 of 160 problems, about 17%. That is survivable if the basics of the other areas are firm, but we would not drop either subject entirely, since the interview format is unpublished and both are standard Master's topics.

Sit one past paper under exam conditions, score its four parts, compute M and D, and compare them with the 2023 to 2026 shortlist cut-offs (M of 36 to 40, D of 48 to 54). This takes about half a day and tells you more than any syllabus list.

1. Choose a paper. Use 2023, 2024, 2025 or 2026 from the NBHM repository, which also hosts the answer keys.
2. Sit it cold. Allow three hours, with no phone or calculator, writing final answers only.
3. Score the parts. For m1 and d1, take 4 × correct answers. For m2 and d2, take 2 × right assertions − 2 × wrong ones, and 0 for blanks.
4. Compute. M = m1 + m2 + d1 + d2. D = m1 + m2 + 1.5 × (d1 + d2).
5. Read the result in the table for your track.

Master's Scholarship track:

A D-score at or above that year's D cut-off also shortlists you for the Master's Scholarship, even if your M-score falls short.

Doctoral Scholarship track:

6. Repeat on a second paper and use the lower result. Papers vary in difficulty, so one score can flatter or mislead you.
7. Log every lost mark as "did not know", "misread" or "guessed wrong". If you answered true/false assertions and got fewer than half right, you lost marks by answering. Leave those blank next time.

If you would like a teacher's walkthrough of previous-year questions before you commit to anything, our free demo classes include Real Analysis, Linear Algebra, Complex Analysis and PYQ discussion.

Worked example 1 (illustrative numbers). You get 11 right in Q1 to 20, so m1 = 44. In Q21 to 25 you answer 6 assertions with 5 right and 1 wrong, so m2 = 10 − 2 = 8. You get 4 right in Q26 to 35, so d1 = 16. In Q36 to 40 you answer 4 assertions with 3 right and 1 wrong, so d2 = 6 − 2 = 4.

M = 44 + 8 + 16 + 4 = 72. D = 44 + 8 + 1.5 × (16 + 4) = 82. Both exceed the highest cut-offs in the tables (40 and 54).

Worked example 2. You get 10 right in Q1 to 20 and leave everything else blank, so M = 40 and D = 40. That meets the Master's cut-off in all four years but falls below every doctoral cut-off (48 to 54). Add two correct problems from Q26 to 35 (d1 = 8) and D = 40 + 1.5 × 8 = 52. That clears the 2023, 2025 and 2026 doctoral cut-offs but not 2024's 54.

Prepare in the order of the marks you lose on past papers, not in textbook order. NBHM publishes no syllabus, so past papers are the only official guide to scope. Our recommended plan:

1. Sit two past papers and log the errors, as set out in the past-paper scoring method.
2. Study the area where you lose the most marks. In practice that is usually linear algebra, algebra or real analysis, which together make up 35 + 24 + 29 = 88 of the 160 problems in our tally.
3. For real analysis, linear algebra and algebra, work from standard texts such as Rudin's Principles of Mathematical Analysis, Hoffman and Kunze's Linear Algebra and Dummit and Foote's Abstract Algebra. Do the exercises that ask you to prove or refute.
4. Do every counting and number theory problem in the four past papers; there are 32 of them. Practise derangements, modular arithmetic, recurrences and basic probability.
5. Practise answer-only writing: reach the final answer, then check it by substitution.
6. For the interview, NBHM publishes no interview syllabus, so in our recommendation, rehearse definitions, short proofs and counterexamples in groups, rings, topology and real analysis.

For an outline of MSc-level topics to check against, our CSIR NET Mathematical Sciences Syllabus Explained lists them.

Linear algebra, real analysis, complex analysis and algebra make up 35 + 29 + 15 + 24 = 103 of the 160 problems in our tally. We teach all four. The first three, 79 of the 160 problems, are in our Pure Combo Live- Dec 2026 course, which is taught in Hindi and covers Linear Algebra, Real Analysis and Complex Analysis. The course page lists NBHM among the exams it targets. As of 4 October 2026 it is listed at ₹5,999, down from ₹7,999. Our other subject courses are in the store.

Score a past paper first, then choose the course for the area where you lost the most marks. If you are unsure which one fits, ask us through our contact page.