NDA for Girls: Seats, the Separate Women’s Cut-off and Height Rules

Women have been eligible for the National Defence Academy since 2021, and the numbers are now clear enough to plan with. In each 2026 cycle, 24 of the 394 seats were for women. In the (II) 2025 cycle, UPSC published a separate women’s cut-off for the first time — and it was markedly higher than the men’s: 358.84 out of 900 in the written exam and 737.40 out of 1,800 overall. This guide sets out the seats by wing, the cut-offs, the eligibility and height rules that apply to women, and how women scored at the SSB.

Notifications 2026; UPSC cut-off PDF (II) 2025; our count of the (I) 2026 written result.

The women’s share of the Naval Academy seats has moved more than the NDA side: the cut-off PDFs show 0 women’s seats at the Naval Academy in (I) 2023, 7 in (II) 2023, 9 in (I) 2024, 5 in (II) 2024 and (I) 2025, and 4 in (II) 2025, before 3 in 2026. The NDA wings have held steady at 10 Army, 2 in each Air Force branch and 3–12 Navy.

The reason is competition: around 480–500 women qualify the written exam each cycle for about two dozen seats, so the women’s list closes higher. Earlier cut-off PDFs printed a single mixed figure. For planning, a woman candidate should therefore aim well above the mixed-list written cut-offs of 291–334 — the (II) 2025 women’s figure of 358.84 is the realistic reference until the 2026 cut-offs appear.

Recommended women had a higher median written score and a higher median SSB score than recommended men. The lowest SSB score among recommended women was 362 — just above the 360 that was the lowest SSB score of any recommended candidate in every cycle with published marks.

Roughly 20 women clear the written exam for every woman’s seat (480 for 24 in (I) 2026), close to the ratio for men (7,399 for 370) — but because the women’s list is short, a handful of strong candidates moves its cut-off a long way. The (II) 2025 written cut-off for women (358.84) was higher than the highest mixed-list written cut-off of the previous five cycles (334). In (II) 2025, 91 of the 742 recommended candidates — about 12% — were women, roughly twice their 6% share of the 406 seats, because the final list is drawn up before the medical (“the results of Medical Examination have not been taken into account in preparing these lists”, per UPSC’s final results) and runs well beyond the number of seats.

With only two women’s seats in each Air Force branch and three at the Naval Academy in 2026, the service order you rank in the application matters a great deal: allocation follows merit-cum-preference, and a preference with two seats fills quickly. The Army wing, with ten women’s seats, is the largest single pool, and it is the only wing open without Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics in Class 12. A candidate targeting the flying branch also needs to pass the Computerised Pilot Selection System, which can be taken only once in a lifetime, and to meet the flying-branch eyesight standard, which in the (I) 2026 notification allows no myopia.

The rules are the same as for men: unmarried, born within the birth-date window of the cycle (for (II) 2026, 1 January 2008 to 1 January 2011), Class 12 in any stream for the Army wing and with Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics for the Navy, Air Force and Naval Academy. The one difference in cost is that women pay no application fee (₹100 for men who are not otherwise exempt). Women sit the same papers as men; UPSC prepares the written results and final merit lists for men and women separately.

The (II) 2025 women’s written cut-off of 358.84 out of 900 is about 40% of the written total. The per-paper minimum applies to everyone alongside the aggregate cut-off — 25% in the recent cycles, at least 75 of 300 in Maths and 150 of 600 in GAT — so a woman candidate cannot reach the line on GAT alone: a GAT score of 280 still needs about 79 in Maths. The calculator in our exam-pattern guide shows how many right and wrong answers produce a given total with negative marking applied.

The same medical rules apply to both sexes for eyesight, weight and tattoos — permanent tattoos only on the inner forearm (elbow to wrist) and the back of the hand. Candidates under 18 at the time of the exam get a 2 cm growth allowance on height in the Army annexure. Our physical-standards guide covers eyesight by wing and the flying-branch rules.