RMS CET 2026: Exam 13 December, Window Closed

RMS CET 2026: The Military Schools Entrance Test Is on 13 December — and the Main Application Window Closes Today, 20 October

The Rashtriya Military Schools Common Entrance Test (RMS CET) 2026 will be held on Sunday, 13 December 2026, for admission to Classes VI and IX for the 2027–28 academic session. This is not a tentative placeholder date any more: the National Testing Agency (NTA), which conducts the exam on behalf of the Ministry of Defence, opened the online application window on 23 September 2026, and the main window closes today, 20 October 2026, at 5:00 PM (fee payment by 11:50 PM tonight). If you are reading this before the 5:00 PM cut-off, treat it as final and submit now. If you miss it, one route remains, briefly: a late submission window is reported for 21 to 25 October 2026 with a ₹500 late fee (see the fee section below) — it has not opened yet, and after 25 October the door shuts until next year.

What these schools are

Rashtriya Military Schools are English-medium residential public schools run by the Ministry of Defence, meant to give quality education to the wards of defence personnel alongside civilians. There are five of them — in Chail (Himachal Pradesh), Ajmer and Dholpur (Rajasthan), and Belgaum and Bengaluru (Karnataka) — and all admissions are to the boarder category only; there are no day scholars. They are founding members of the Indian Public Schools' Conference and have long been one of the most affordable routes to a residential, English-medium education: post-admission annual fees are heavily subsidised, varying by parent category, with complete fee exemption for wards of personnel killed in action.

Who can apply

The test covers two entry points. For Class VI: the child must have passed Class V or be studying in Class V and pass it before admission, and must be 10 to 13 years of age as on 31 March 2027 — that is, born between 1 April 2014 and 31 March 2017. For Class IX: the child must have passed Class VIII from a government or recognised school before the date of admission, and must be 13 to 16 years as on 31 March 2027 — born between 1 April 2011 and 31 March 2014. Wards of Armed Forces personnel killed in action get a six-month relaxation in the upper age limit. Admission to both classes is subject to available vacancies.

There is also a hard reservation structure that surprises many civilian parents. Of the seats, 70% go to the entitled category — children of JCOs and other ranks, serving or retired, of the Army, Air Force and Navy — 20% to the non-entitled category of officers, serving or retired, and 10% to civilians. A civilian child is therefore competing for a genuine but small fraction of seats, and should apply with that arithmetic in mind.

The application window and fee

Applications run from 23 September to 20 October 2026, closing at 5:00 PM today, with the fee payment deadline at 11:50 PM tonight, 20 October. Only one application per candidate is allowed, and it cannot be withdrawn once submitted — so checking the date of birth against the eligibility window before paying is the critical step, not after. The category-wise fee as reported is ₹1,000 for General/OBC/OBC-NCL candidates and ₹750 for SC, ST and wards of Armed Forces personnel killed in action, payable online by credit card, debit card, net banking or UPI. A late window is reported to run from 21 to 25 October 2026: submissions until 5:00 PM on 25 October with an extra ₹500 late fee, and fee payment due by 11:50 PM that day. A correction window for submitted forms is also reported for 27–28 October 2026. Both the late window and the correction window are as reported by multiple outlets carrying the NTA schedule; confirm them on the NTA RMS portal before relying on them (see Flags).

The exam itself

The written examination is a pen-and-paper, OMR-based test of multiple-choice questions, held across 63 cities in India. For Class VI, the papers are English (50 marks — qualifying only, not counted in the merit list), Intelligence Test (50), Mathematics (50), and General Knowledge and Current Affairs (50), followed by an interview of 20 marks. For Class IX, there are two papers — Paper I of 100 marks covering English, Hindi and Social Science, and Paper II of 100 marks covering Mathematics and Science — followed by an interview of 50 marks. Reported minimum qualifying standards are 35% in English and 40% in the remaining Class VI papers, and 50% in each Class IX paper, but treat those figures as needing confirmation from the Information Bulletin rather than as settled.

NTA's role covers the application process, the written examination, evaluation and the declaration of the Stage 1 result — the prospectus schedule places result compilation in January 2027, with joining instructions and school joining in the months that follow. The schools themselves handle the later stages, including the medical examination at the nominated Military Hospital chosen during registration — and note that the hospital choice cannot be changed after submission.

What to do now

If you applied before the deadline, your job list is short: keep the confirmation page safe, watch the NTA RMS portal for the exam-city slip and admit card (admit cards are typically released in the week before the exam), and prepare for an OMR multiple-choice test on 13 December — note that the exam goes ahead even if the date is declared a public holiday, per the prospectus. If the main window has closed by the time you read this, the reported late window (21–25 October, ₹500 extra fee) is the last route into this cycle — verify it on the NTA portal first. If that closes too, the realistic next step is the Class IX attempt next year if the age bracket still fits, or planning a year ahead for the next Class VI cycle. And for civilian parents in particular: given the 10% civilian reservation, a parallel plan outside the military-school route is not pessimism — it is what the numbers say.

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