Last verified: 13 November 2026. Exam dates and patterns marked ✅ CONFIRMED come from the official sources: NTA AISSEE 2027 Information Bulletin (3 November 2026), NTA RMS CET-2026 Information Bulletin, the NVS JNVST-2027 prospectus, and the RIMC entrance notice — JNVST 28 November 2026, RIMCEE 6 December 2026, RMS CET 13 December 2026, AISSEE 31 January 2027. The sequencing and study advice below is our editorial guidance, not official instruction.
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Look at the next ten weeks from a parent’s chair. 28 November: JNVST. 6 December: RIMC. 13 December: RMS CET. 31 January: AISSEE. Four entrance exams, four Sundays, one child.
Nobody sat down in June and designed this. It just happened — the defence-school calendar compressed into a single winter, and the families who applied to more than one exam are now staring at a wall of dates. If that is your house, this article is for you. And the first thing to say is the thing nobody says: four exams is manageable. Four exams treated as four separate mountains is not.
| Exam | Date | Class | Paper | What it opens |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| JNVST 2027 | Sat, 28 Nov 2026 | Class 6 | 80 Q, 100 marks, 2 hrs, OMR, no negative marking | Free residential Navodaya Vidyalaya |
| RIMCEE 2026 | Sun, 6 Dec 2026 | Class 8 | 400 marks (English, Maths, GK), 50% in every paper to reach viva | RIMC Dehradun, July 2027 term |
| RMS CET 2026 | Sun, 13 Dec 2026 | Class 6 & 9 | 200 MCQs, 2.5 hrs, OMR, no negative marking + interview | 5 Rashtriya Military Schools |
| AISSEE 2027 | Sun, 31 Jan 2027 | Class 6 & 9 | Class 6: 125 Q, 300 marks, 150 min; Class 9: 150 Q, 400 marks, 180 min; no negative marking | 33 Sainik Schools + new Sainik Schools |
A Class 6 child realistically sits three of these — JNVST, RMS CET and AISSEE. A Class 8 child sits two — RIMC and AISSEE Class 9. Nobody sits all four. That already makes the job smaller than it looks.
Here is the thing that saves this plan. These exams are not four different subjects. They are the same four skills, rearranged.
Maths is maths everywhere — arithmetic for Class 6, algebra and geometry creeping in for Class 9. Reasoning or mental ability appears in every paper under a different name. Language — English, and Hindi in some papers — is tested everywhere. And general knowledge, including the new EVS section in this year’s JNVST, rewards the same habit: a little reading every day, not a crash course in the last week.
So your child is not preparing for four exams. They are preparing for one set of skills, and sitting four papers that sample it differently. Once you see it that way, the workload stops multiplying.
The mistake most families make is revising subject by subject — “this week is Maths week” — while the calendar screams otherwise. Revise in exam order instead:
Now to 28 November — JNVST leads. Short paper, two hours, morning slot (11:30 AM to 1:30 PM). Practise morning papers. Drill the new EVS section — 20 questions, 25 marks, new this year — because it is the one part of JNVST that last year’s papers cannot teach. Mental ability and arithmetic carry the rest.
29 November to 6 December — RIMC leads (Class 8 children only). This is the hardest paper of the four in one specific way: 50% in every paper to reach the viva. A strong Maths score cannot rescue a weak English paper. So this week, the weakest RIMC paper gets the most hours — not the favourite one.
7 to 13 December — RMS CET leads. Two and a half hours, OMR, no negative marking. Watch for the city slip in the last week of November and the admit card around 8 December. Class 6 children should mind the qualifying trap: English needs 35% to qualify but does not count in merit, while Intelligence, Maths and GK each need 40%.
14 December to 31 January — AISSEE, and only AISSEE. Seven clear weeks. This is where the full-length mocks live: one a week, analysed the same day, in the real 2 PM slot. Everything before December was rehearsal. This is the performance.
Every family juggling exams needs to answer one question honestly: if your child could clear only one of these, which would it be?
For most Class 6 families, the answer is AISSEE — it opens the widest choice of seats. For a Class 8 child, it is usually AISSEE Class 9 or RIMC, depending on the child’s strengths. Name the primary exam. Tell your child. Then treat the other exams as bonus attempts that reuse the same preparation, not as equal-weight finals.
This is not lowering expectations. It is how you stop a child from carrying four sets of expectations into one exam hall. A child who knows which exam matters most walks in calmer — and calmer children score better.
A short checklist, because in a busy house the rules are what get forgotten first:
Last year, a parent told us her son had sat three of these exams and cleared one — the one that mattered to them. She said the winter had felt impossible in November and obvious by February: the same maths, the same reasoning, the same child, just four different Sundays.
That is the whole secret. You are not preparing for four exams. You are preparing one child, well, for ten weeks. Do that, in exam order, with rest days in between — and the calendar stops looking like a wall and starts looking like a staircase.
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