Alerts and Updates for Odisha CPET (Common PG Entrance Test)

The two descriptions of the paper are listed side by side because they cannot both be right and neither could be checked against the state portal, whose PG datelines page served a 2024 calendar when retrieved. CollegeDekho also allows a 5 CGPA in place of the 45 per cent aggregate. Collegedunia notes that subject-specific requirements apply for science programmes.

The May to August rows are Collegedunia's account of the first phase; the September rows are OdishaExams' account of the second phase. The SAMS Odisha datelines page served a 2024 calendar when retrieved, so none of these dates carries official confirmation here and the 24 September merit list in particular is a scheduled, not an achieved, event.

The thing candidates most often get wrong about Odisha CPET is assuming the entrance score is the whole of the merit score. On Collegedunia's account it is 70 of 100, with the remaining 30 coming from career marks awarded on the Class 10, Class 12 and degree results. Those 30 marks are fixed before a candidate enters the hall, which changes both what a given entrance performance is worth and how realistic a particular college is.

Collegedunia describes 30 career marks split as 5 for Class 10, 10 for Class 12 and 15 for the undergraduate degree, added to 70 entrance marks for a total of 100. Two consequences follow. First, a candidate with a weak academic record has to clear a higher bar in the paper simply to reach the same merit position as a stronger one, and should calibrate target colleges accordingly rather than from entrance score alone. Second, because the degree component carries half of the career block, final-year candidates admitted provisionally should expect their position to be settled only once the degree result is in, and should check that the marks SAMS holds match their final statement.

OdishaExams describes the second phase as being for candidates not selected, or not seated, in the first phase. After three allotment rounds and an August spot round, what remains is the residue: subjects and colleges that did not clear in the first pass. The strategy that works in a first-phase choice list, ranking by preference and trusting volume to deliver something, works badly here because the popular combinations are largely gone. A second-phase candidate should identify which subject and institution pairings plausibly still have seats and order choices around availability, accepting a less-preferred college or a cognate subject where that is what converts.

Collegedunia describes an offline OMR paper of 70 multiple-choice questions, 40 core and 30 elective, over 90 minutes per subject, carrying 70 marks with no negative marking. CollegeDekho describes 100 one-mark multiple-choice questions over 80 minutes with a deduction of 0.25 marks for each wrong answer. These are not reconcilable and the SAMS portal could not confirm either. The difference matters most for guessing policy: under the first account there is no cost to attempting everything, under the second there is. A candidate preparing for a future cycle should settle this from the official information brochure rather than from either page.

Both Collegedunia and CollegeDekho give the same fee structure: INR 500 per subject for general, SEBC and EWS candidates, INR 300 for SC and ST candidates, no fee for persons with disability and transgender candidates, and INR 200 for each additional subject. Because the charge scales with subjects entered, breadth has a direct price. The calculation worth making is whether an extra subject genuinely widens the seat pool available at a given merit score, or merely adds a paper to sit. Given that over 50 subjects are offered across 114 or more institutions, a second well-chosen subject often does widen it materially.

The SAMS Odisha PG datelines page, which is the natural authority for this calendar, returned the 2024 schedule when retrieved for this update. That means the entire 2026 calendar presented here rests on aggregator reporting, including the 24 September second-phase merit list, which is the single date a current candidate most needs. Aggregator dates for state counselling drift, and revised schedules are common. Before travelling to an institution, before treating a window as closed, and before concluding that a list has been missed, open pg.samsodisha.gov.in and read the notice there.