CUET Cut Off: What It Is and Who Decides It

Why the CUET cut off differs everywhere

Think of CUET as a common ruler. Every candidate is measured on it, but each university decides how long the line must be for each course. A central university with few seats in a popular programme will close high; a newer university or a less demanded course may close much lower with the same pool of applicants.

On top of that, one university can use different subject combinations for different courses. A BCom seat may be judged on English plus commerce papers, while a BA programme in the same college may use English plus any three domain subjects. Your score for each course is therefore a different number.

From test score to admission, step by step

1. NTA scores the test. When one subject is spread over several sessions, NTA adjusts marks to remove the advantage of an easier session, and reports a normalised score for each test.
2. Universities collect applications. You register separately on each university's admission portal and choose courses and colleges.
3. A merit score is built per course. The university adds or weighs your normalised scores in the subjects that course requires.
4. Seats are filled in rounds. In each round, the last admitted score in a category becomes that round's closing mark.
5. Later rounds shift. As students upgrade, withdraw or join elsewhere, seats open and closing marks usually fall a little.

CUET cut off marks for UG courses

For undergraduate courses, the big names in admissions, such as Delhi University and Banaras Hindu University, run their own allocation systems, and what they release is a seat allotment after each round, not a printed list of marks. Our CUET UG cut off page explains those processes in detail.

Across the UG cycles from 2022 to 2025, three things kept repeating. Honours programmes in high demand at famous colleges were taken almost entirely by candidates with very high scores in round one. Closing scores for reserved seats were lower than for open seats, by an amount that changed from course to course. And for the same programme, a college with a lower profile often admitted students well below the score that the best known colleges needed.

How PG cut offs behave

For master's programmes, universities usually rank you on the one CUET PG paper they accept for that course, out of 300. Seats per programme are small, often a few dozen, so a handful of strong candidates can move the closing score noticeably from one year to the next. Some universities add their own steps, such as interviews for research oriented programmes, so the CUET score may be only part of the final merit.

Read the prospectus to see which paper counts and whether any weightage is given to your graduation marks. The paper wise detail is on our CUET PG syllabus page.

What pushes closing scores up or down

Is your CUET score good enough?

• Look up the allotment results of the course you want from the last two cycles on the university's own portal, not on forwarded lists.
• Compare your normalised score, not your raw marks, since that is what universities use.
• Keep at least two courses where your score sits clearly above last year's closing point.
• Do not skip later rounds. Many students get their preferred college in round two or three.

If you are still preparing, put your effort where the cut off is decided: the subjects your course requires. The CUET syllabus page shows how to pick tests, and our CUET previous papers guide shows how to practise them. More entrance tests are in the entrance exams section.

How to check cut off of CUET officially

Because the cut off of CUET is a university decision, the official numbers are only on university admission portals. During counselling, each university releases seat allocation or merit lists by round, course and category. Bookmark the admission page of every university you apply to and check it on each round date.