How to prepare for upcoming NDA exam

To clear the NDA exam and make it to the final recommendation, strategic preparation by aspirants under the right mentorship becomes significant, writes Shishir Dixit

- Shishir Dixit

NDA is a national-level entrance examination conducted twice a year by the UPSC for admission of eligible candidates into the National Defence Academy (NDA). The selection process for the NDA consists of a written exam, and a personality-cum-intelligence test, commonly known as SSB interview which is subsequently followed by a medical fitness test. Following are the key preparation tips to clear the NDA written exam.

Written exam

The written exam comprises only objective-type questions and is conducted in offline mode in two shifts on a single day. There are two important papers included in the syllabus of the NDA written exam, Mathematics and General Ability Test (GAT). The Mathematics paper consists of 120 questions carrying a total of 300 marks. The GAT paper includes an English section, and it contains a total of 150 questions with 600 marks. For every wrong answer marked by the candidates, there is a penalty of negative marking and as a result, marks are deducted.

General Knowledge and English help the candidates in the GAT paper as well as during the SSB interview. Aspirants must focus on improving English and General Knowledge as these are the scoring areas required to crack the NDA examination.