Last verified: 13 October 2026. The 44-cadet figure below is reported by SSBCrack (published 12 October 2026) and attributed to the school. The school has not yet put out a formal press note on its own website as of this morning’s check — treat the batch split as reported figures, and the background facts as labelled.
Sainik School Ghorakhal has announced that 44 of its cadets have cleared the written stage of the UPSC NDA (II) 2026 examination — one of the biggest single-school tallies reported in this result season. According to the report, 30 of the qualifiers come from the school’s current Class XII batch of the 2026–27 session, while 14 are from the batch that passed out in March 2026.
Principal Group Captain Madhu Senger congratulated the successful cadets and the staff, extending best wishes for the next stage of selection — the Services Selection Board (SSB) interview.
SSBCrack reported on 12 October that Ghorakhal’s 44 written-stage qualifiers will now prepare for the SSB interview, the second stage of the officer-selection process. The breakdown across two batches is worth noting: the current Class XII batch delivered 30 qualifiers, and the previous batch — cadets who left the school in March 2026 and kept preparing — added 14 more, nearly a third of the tally. A Sainik School’s job doesn’t end at the school gate.
Ghorakhal is not a newcomer to NDA headlines. In December 2025, Uttarakhand’s Chief Minister inaugurated the school’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations, noting that it holds the record for the highest number of selections into the NDA among the Sainik Schools and had recently won the Defence Minister’s Trophy for the 10th time (reported by ANI). A school with sixty years of defence-officer preparation producing 44 written-stage qualifiers is consistent, not surprising.
And this has been a remarkable week for the Sainik School system overall. Sainik School Kalikiri reported 50 NDA written qualifiers, including three girls from its first-ever batch of female cadets. Sainik School Nalanda reported 23 qualifiers. Nine cadets from Sainik School Punglwa in Nagaland also cleared the exam. Four schools, four states — the system doing exactly what it was built to do.
Clearing the written exam is stage one of three. The SSB interview — five days of psychological tests, group tasks and personal interviews — is widely considered the real filter. Only after the SSB and a medical test does a candidate enter the final merit list for the 158th NDA course and the 120th Indian Naval Academy course, commencing 1 July 2027 (as reported by The Times of India).
For parents reading this as motivation: the written exam (GAT + Mathematics, held on 13 September 2026 for this cycle) rewards exactly the kind of steady, syllabus-driven preparation that Sainik Schools build from Class VI onward. If you want the honest, unsensational picture of the Sainik-School-to-NDA pipeline — including real conversion numbers — read Sainik School to NDA: the Real Numbers.
Photo: Pexels
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