M.Sc.

2025 Entrance Test

Pattern & Syllabus

Section 1: Entrance Test Pattern

GENERAL INFORMATION
✔​ Mode: Online, proctored
✔​ Sections: Part A: General paper (Compulsory) & Part B: One subject paper (candidate’s
choice)
✔​ Duration: 90 minutes
✔​ Total marks: 100
✔​ No. of questions: 75 (Part A: 25, Part B: 50)
✔​ Type of questions:
●​ Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) - (60 %)
For each question, four options will be provided. Candidates should select only one
right option. 1 mark is awarded for each correct answer while 0.25 mark is deducted
for every wrong answer.
●​ Multiple Select Questions (MSQs) - (20 %)
For each question, four options will be provided. Candidates should select more than
one option. Each correct answer carries 1 or 2 marks. No negative marking for
wrong answers and no partial marks are awarded.
●​ Numerical Answer Type Questions (NATQs) - (20 %)
For each question, four options will be provided. Candidates should select only one
right option OR candidates can enter their answers in digits. Each correct answer
carries 1 or 2 marks. No negative marking for wrong answers and no partial marks
are awarded.
Section 2: Syllabus
This section describes the syllabus for the entrance examination. Note that this section is divided
into two parts, viz, Part A and Part B. Part A is a compulsory section for all candidates while the
candidate must choose only ONE subject from Part B.

Part A (Compulsory: 25 questions)

Section A1: Logical Reasoning and Aptitude (50 %)
Quantitative Aptitude: (30 %)
Numerical computation and estimation; Ratios and Proportions; Percentages; Powers; Exponents
and logarithms; Permutations and combinations; Series; Mensuration, Geometry and Trigonometry;
Elementary statistics; Probability; Units of Measurement; Linear and Quadratic equations; Binomial
theorem; Set theory; Molarity/Normality/percentage solution; Growth rate and mutation rate
calculations.

Analytical Aptitude: (10 %)

Logic: deduction and induction; Analogy; Simple Puzzles; Numerical relations and reasoning,
Euclidean Geometry riders
Spatial Aptitude: (10 %)
Transformation of shapes; Translation and Rotation; Scaling and Mirroring; Assembling and
Grouping; Patterns in 2 and 3 dimensions; Interpreting the graphs, plots and charts (line, bar, pie)

Section A2: Basic Maths/Physics/Chemistry/Biology (40 %)

Basic knowledge of science subjects at 10+2 level

Section A3: General science knowledge (10 %)

General awareness of scientific advancements
Part B (Any one subject: 50 questions)
Choose any ONE subject from the following:

1.​ Biological Sciences

2.​ Physical and Chemical Sciences
3.​ Mathematical and Computational Sciences

Part B1: Biological Sciences

Cell Biology and Genetics: (10 %)

Prokaryotes and Eukaryotes; Cell organelles; Intracellular protein sorting and trafficking; GPCR
and RTK signalling pathways; Regulation of cell cycle; Mitosis and Meiosis; Chromatin
organization; Stem cells; Mendel’s laws and inheritance of human diseases; Genetic recombination
and linkage analysis; Epistasis, polymorphism and inheritance of polygenic traits; Mutations and
mutagens; Apoptosis and cancer

Biochemistry: (10 %)
Concepts of mole, mole fraction, molarity; Structure of nucleic acids, proteins, carbohydrates and
lipids; Enzyme kinetics and inhibition; Allostericity and cofactors; Bioenergetics; Metabolism and
its regulation; Photosynthesis and Respiration

Molecular Biology and Biotechnology: (15 %)

Central dogma; Replication and repair of DNA; Regulation of transcription and translation in
prokaryotes and eukaryotes; Restriction and DNA modifying enzymes; DNA vectors for cloning
and protein expression; Recombinant DNA technology; Methods to introduce DNA into cells;
Transgenic crops

Microbiology & Immunology: (15 %)

Identification and structure of bacteria, fungi, virus and protozoa; Microbial metabolism and growth
kinetics; Pathogenic microbes and virulence factors; Antibiotic resistance; Innate and adaptive
immunity; Humoral and cell-mediated immunity; Immune cells and antigen presentation;
Generation of antibody diversity; Hypersensitivity and Autoimmunity; Complement system

Applied biosciences/Analytical biology: (10 %)

Principles of electrophoresis, PCR and RT-qPCR, Sanger DNA sequencing, chromatography and
centrifugation techniques, spectrophotometry, microscopy; Southern, Northern and Western
blotting; Genetically modified animals and plants; Cloning of animals; Gene editing and gene
therapy; ELISA

Animal Biology: (10 %)

Animal development (Fertilization, embryonic pattern formation, cleavage, gastrulation, cellular
differentiation, and morphogenesis); Anatomy and physiology of digestive, circulatory, respiratory,
excretory, nervous, reproductive, and endocrine systems; Animal taxonomy
Plant biology: (10 %)
Types of tissues and organs; Primary and secondary growth; Morphogenesis; Gametogenesis,
incompatibility, embryogenesis, dormancy, germination; Plant hormones; Photobiology; Plant
response to biotic and abiotic stresses; Transport in vascular plants; Plant nutrition; Protoplast
fusion methods; Nitrogen fixation

Ecology & Evolution: (5 %)

Biomes; Environmental constraints on species distribution; Factors affecting population density;
Interactions among communities; Geochemical cycles; Biotic and abiotic factors in ecosystems;
Darwinian natural selection; Population genetics (sources of genetic variation, gene pools, and
allele frequencies), Hardy-Weinberg equation, genetic drift, gene flow, and adaptive evolution;
Evidences of evolution

Biophysics and Bioinformatics: (15 %)

Biological databases; Analysis of nucleic acid and protein sequences using tools like BLAST;
Multiple Sequence Alignment and Phylogeny; Concepts of genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics,
and metabolomics. Protein folding energetics, inter and intra-molecular interactions in
biomolecules, structure determination methods.
Part B2: Physical and Chemical Sciences

Physics
Mathematical physics: (5 %)
Vectors and matrices, Continuity and differentiability of functions, Differentiation and integration of
functions and their physical meaning, Ordinary differential equations, Taylor’s series, Fourier
series.

Classical Mechanics: (10 %)

Newton’s Laws of motion, Gravitational Field, Motion under central force, Kepler’s laws,
conservation of linear and angular momentum, conservation of energy, elastic collisions, rigid body
motion, translational and rotational moments of inertia, fundamentals of fluid motion, viscosity,
Simple harmonic motion, periodic motion on a circle, wave equation in one dimension, travelling
and standing waves in one dimension, resonance, sound waves in media, Doppler effect.

Optics: (5 %)
Fermat’s principle, Theory of image formation, Lens formulae and lens combinations, Interference
of light, Fraunhofer and Fresnel diffraction, Rayleigh’s criterion and resolving power, diffraction
gratings, Linear, circular and elliptic polarization, optical rotation, crystal structure and Bravais
Lattice, Miller indices, X-ray diffraction, Bragg’s law.

Kinetic Theory, Heat and Thermodynamics: (10 %)

Kinetic theory of gases, velocity distribution and equipartition of energy, ideal gas properties,
specific heat, van-der-Waals equation of state, mean free path, Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution
and the concept of temperature, Laws of thermodynamics and their consequences: concepts of
thermal equilibrium, isothermal and adiabatic processes, reversible and irreversible processes,
Carnot cycle and the concept of entropy. Phase transitions.

Electricity and Magnetism: (5 %)

Coulomb's Law, Gauss Law, the concept of electric field and electric potential, conductors,
capacitors, dielectrics and polarization, Electric current, Biot-Savart law, Ampere’s law, Faraday’s
law of electromagnetic induction, Self and Mutual induction, motors and dynamo, generation of
alternating and direct currents, Simple AC and DC circuits, LCR circuits and resonance,
Maxwell's equations and plane electromagnetic waves, Lorentz force and the motion of charged
particles in electric and magnetic fields, Larmor radius, charge separation using electric and
magnetic fields.

Modern Physics: (10 %)

Postulates of special relativity, Lorentz transformation, length contraction and time dilation,
mass-energy equivalence, black body radiation, photoelectric effect, Compton effect,
Bohr’s atom model, wave-particle duality, uncertainty principle, superposition principle,
Schrodinger’s equation and its solution for one-dimensional box, solution of the harmonic
oscillator, Pauli’s exclusion principle structure of the atomic nucleus, mass and binding energy,
Periodic table, Laws of Radioactive decay.

Electronics and devices: (5 %)

Intrinsic and extrinsic semiconductors, resistivity variation with temperature, p-n junction diodes,
I-V characteristics of diodes, Zener diodes,
bridge rectifiers, basic transistors and their characteristics, emitter followers, single-stage and
two-stage RC-coupled amplifier, simple oscillator circuits, inverting and non-inverting amplifiers,
measurement of current and voltages, Boolean algebra: Binary number systems; conversion from
one system to another system; binary addition and subtraction. Logic Gates AND, OR, NOT,
NAND, NOR and exclusive OR; Truth tables; combinations of gates; De Morgan’s theorem

Chemistry
General chemistry: (15 %)
Chemical bonds: Introduction and need of chemical bond formation - Types of bonds: Ionic,
Covalent, Coordinate covalent, Metallic and Hydrogen bond formations with suitable illustrations -
Mass units: Molarity, Molality, and Normality with examples - Weight and volume composition
percentage - Volumetric analysis: Introduction - Titration - Equivalence point - End Point - Analysis
of endpoint - Indicators - Standard solutions (primary and secondary). Acid-base chemistry,
principles of chemical equilibria, common ion effects, ionic product of water, redox reactions

Organic and inorganic chemistry: (15 %)

Organic reactions - Nucleophiles and Electrophiles - Types of organic reactions with simple
examples - Addition, Elimination, Substitution, Rearrangement, and Polymerization - Purifications
of Organic Compounds - General introduction to distillation, crystallization, chromatography.
Stereochemistry - structural isomerism, chain isomerism, position isomerism, functional isomerism,
tautomerism, geometrical isomerism - representation of 3D structures- Newman, Sawhorse, Wedge
and Fisher projection - RS notation - optical isomerism, chirality, enantiomerism,
diastereoisomerism - conformational analysis of small molecules such as ethane, butane,
cyclohexane, etc.

Physical and analytical chemistry: (10 %)

Principles and methods of characterization of compounds including mass spectrometry, nuclear
magnetic resonance spectroscopy, IR spectroscopy, and UV-VIS spectroscopy. Basics of
thermodynamics - thermodynamic systems - reversible and irreversible processes - laws of
thermodynamics - energy changes in living systems- free energy, enthalpy, entropy and their
relationship - free energy changes in biochemical reactions such as hydrolysis of ATP, etc.

Applied chemistry: (5 %)
Physico-chemical properties in relation to biological action - ionization - solubility - partition
coefficient - hydrogen bonding - protein binding - chelation - bioisosterism - drug metabolism
principles phase I and phase II - factors affecting drug metabolism including stereochemical aspects
- microbial biodegradation of compounds (aerobic and anaerobic) - types of environmental
pollutants (organic, inorganic, biological) - biodegradation of plastics - types of bioplastics, dioxins,
polychlorinated biphenyls, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, pesticides

Basic Biochemistry: (5 %)
Structure of nucleic acids, carbohydrates, and lipids; Enzyme kinetics and inhibition; Allostericity
and cofactors; Bioenergetics; Metabolism and its regulation.
Part B3: Mathematical and Computational Sciences

Mathematics (70 %)
Sequence and Series: (5 %)
Sequence of real numbers, their convergence, and limits; limits of standard sequences; Summation
of series; Tests for convergence and divergence of series

Coordinate systems and analytical geometry: (15 %)

Points in two and three-dimensional cartesian coordinate system; distance between points; polar
coordinates; circular motion and their projection on axes; equations of lines and planes in three
dimensions

Functions and Equations: (15 %)

Linear and nonlinear functions; polynomial, exponential, logarithmic, trigonometric functions and
their graphs; Equations of 2-D and 3-D geometrical objects like straight lines, circles,
parabola, hyperbola, ellipse, cylinder, ellipsoid, sphere and their properties; Quadratic, cubic
equations and their solutions; Binomial theorem and expansion; Series expansions of trigonometric
functions

Differential Calculus: (10 %)

Limits and continuity; derivatives; Physical and Geometric Meaning of calculus, continuity, and
differentiability of functions of one variable; methods of differentiation; Equation of the tangent and
normal to a function at a given point; linear expansion of functions at a point; Maxima and minima
of a function of one and two variables and its applications; Critical point, Hessian matrix and
saddle point; partial derivative of functions of one and many variables; total derivative and
estimation of errors;

Integral Calculus: (5 %)
Fundamental theorems of integral calculus (single integral). Lebnitz's rule and
its applications; Differentiation under the integral sign; Methods of integration; Area under the
curve; Improper integrals; Double integrals; Change of order of integration; Transformation of
variables. Applications of definite integrals. Arc lengths, areas and volumes.

Linear Algebra: (10 %)

Vectors in two and three dimensions; Magnitude and direction of vectors; direction cosines; Scalar
and vector product of two vectors; vector projection; scalar and vector triple products and their
applications;

Vector spaces with real field. Linear dependence and independence. Dimension and basis. Algebra
of matrices. Standard matrices (Symmetric and Skew Symmetric matrices, Hermitian and Skew
Hermitian matrices, Orthogonal and Unitary matrices, Idempotent and Nilpotent matrices).
Definition, properties and applications of determinants. Evaluation of determinants using
transformations. Determinant of the product of matrices. Singular and non-singular matrices and
their properties. Trace of a matrix. Adjoint and inverse of a matrix and related properties. The rank
of a matrix, row-rank, column-rank, standard theorems on ranks, the rank of the sum, and the
product of two matrices. Row reduction and echelon forms. Partitioning of matrices and simple
properties. Consistent and inconsistent system of linear equations.

Properties of solutions of a system of linear equations. Use of determinants in solution to the system
of linear equations. Cramer’s rule. Eigenvalue problem - Characteristic roots and Characteristic
vectors. Properties of characteristic roots and vectors. Cayley Hamilton theorem.

Statistics: (10 %)
Probability definition, theorems on probability; set-theoretical approach to probability, Counting
methods – permutation and combinations; conditional probability and Bayes theorem; dependence
and independence of events; contingency tables;

Statistical parameters and their estimation; Mean, Median, Mode, Variance, Standard deviation,
Coefficient of variation, Quantiles, Quartiles; Continuous and discrete probability distributions of
random variables – Bernoulli, Binomial, negative binomial, exponential, hypergeometric, Poisson,
Gaussian distributions and their properties; Probability density and cumulative distributions of these
functions; Measures of skewness and kurtosis of a distribution;

Central limit theorem; Confidence intervals; sampling distribution of a statistic; Z, chi-square, and t
distributions; distributions of sample mean, difference in sample means, and ratios of variances; F
distribution; Method of moments, method of maximum likelihood, invariance of maximum
likelihood estimators. Least squares estimation and its applications in simple linear regression
models. Testing of Hypotheses: Null and alternative hypotheses (simple and composite), Type-I and
Type-II errors. Critical region. Level of significance, size, and power of a test, p-value. Statistical
tests – parametric t-test and ANOVA for one, two, and more than two variables; Nonparametric
Wilcoxon tests and Welsch ANOVA for one, two,o and more variables; F-test on ratios of
variances;

Computational Sciences (30 %)

Programming, Data Structures and Algorithms: (15 %)
Programming in Python, basic data structures: Arrays, stacks, queues, linked lists, trees, Binary
Search Trees, hash tables; Big O notation, Search algorithms: linear search and binary search, basic
sorting algorithms: Selection sort, bubble sort and Insertion sort; divide and conquer: Dynamic
Programming, mergesort, quicksort; Recurrence relations, string algorithms Introduction to graph
theory; graph coloring, basic graph algorithms: traversals and shortest path algorithms.

Machine Learning: (15 %)

Exploratory Data Analysis: basic statistical operations, correlation, outliers, dimensionality
reduction, Principal Component Analysis, Supervised Learning: regression and Classification
problems, simple linear regression, Multiple linear regression, Logistic regression, k-nearest
neighbour, naive Bayes classifier, support vector machine, decision trees, bias-variance trade-offs,
cross-validation methods such as k-folds cross-validation, Unsupervised Learning: clustering
algorithms, k-means/k-medoid, hierarchical clustering, top-down, bottom-up: single-linkage,
Multiple-linkage.