Last verified: 13 October 2026. The 67%/33% split and the reservation percentages below are CONFIRMED from the AISSAC counselling Standard Operating Procedure for the Sainik Schools Society’s 33 schools. Seat counts in the worked examples are illustrative examples, not published figures — they exist to show how the maths works.
When parents first hear about AISSEE counselling, one question follows quickly: “We are from Bihar but my child wants Sainik School Purulia — whose quota are we in?” The answer decides how many seats you are competing for, who your competitors are, and sometimes whether a dream school is realistic. Here is the home-state quota, decoded properly — with the maths worked out so you never have to guess again.
Under the AISSAC (All India Sainik Schools Admission Counselling) SOP, every one of the 33 Sainik Schools divides its seats like this:
| Seat pool | Share | Who competes |
|---|---|---|
| Home-state quota | 67% of seats | Candidates holding domicile of the state where the school is located |
| Other-states quota | 33% of seats | Candidates from every other state (including yours) |
“Home state” is always defined by the school, not the student. Sainik School Purulia’s home state is West Bengal; Sainik School Rewa’s is Madhya Pradesh. A student from Patna applies to Purulia in the 33% other-states pool — and to Sainik School Nalanda in the 67% home-state pool. Which school to pick as your first preference is a separate decision — our AISSAC preference guide covers it.
Two things parents get wrong here: first, that a Bihar-domiciled child can somehow also enter a West Bengal home-state pool (they cannot); second, that the 67% is “easy” (it is competitive too — you are up against the entire state’s merit list).
The state split is the first division. Inside each school’s total, the category reservations apply as well — CONFIRMED per the counselling SOP:
Girls compete within the same pools — there is no separate gender quota, and the 10% girls intake policy operates through the same counselling.
These examples use round seat counts purely to show the arithmetic. Actual published intake per school for 2027 will come with the notification and the seats matrix.
Example 1 — A school with 90 Class VI seats.
Example 2 — A defence-category child from Uttar Pradesh targeting Sainik School Mainpuri (home state: UP).
She lands in the 67% pool — good. Within it, she also benefits from the defence-women/ward reservation layer as applicable. Her realistic competition set is UP-domiciled children in her category, not the all-India list. That is the quota working as designed: it rewards applying where your domicile is.
Example 3 — A general-category boy from Karnataka targeting Sainik School Bijapur vs Sainik School Rewa.
This is why our West Bengal guide stresses knowing your own state’s school first: the home-state pool is roughly twice as large as the other-states pool, and your competition is narrower.
Here is where the quota gets personal. Counselling uses the candidate’s own domicile certificate — not the father’s, not the family’s ancestral claim. Common mistakes that have cost real seats:
Start the paperwork in October-November, not at counselling time. Certificates take weeks, and counselling document verification accepts no “it is in process”.
The home-state quota is the single biggest structural advantage an AISSEE candidate gets. Used deliberately, it turns “apply everywhere” anxiety into a short, sensible list — and October, before the form window opens, is exactly when to draw that list up.
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