Every NIMCET paper from 2008 to 2026 was parsed, classified and back-tested to answer one question: what is most likely to be asked in June 2027, and how confident can we be about it?
The section split is not a guess. NIMCET changed it in 2023 — not 2026 — and has held it for four consecutive papers.
Vector & 3D questions ran at 5–8 per paper for 18 years, then collapsed to a single question in 2026 when the revised syllabus dropped vector algebra. Those slots moved into Algebra (+3.6) and Sets & Functions (+1.8).
300 cross-year near-duplicates were detected, 44 of them near-verbatim. The gap peaks at 2 years and 4 years — which points 2027 straight at the 2025 and 2023 papers.
A slow exponential average of the whole history predicts each topic to ±1.43 questions. Predicting "same as last year" scores 1.81 — the worst of eleven methods tested.
Blue bar is the 2027 prediction, pale band is the 80% interval from back-test residuals, red tick is what 2026 actually asked.
Questions per topic per paper. The last column is the 2027 prediction. 2012 is partly missing (59 of its questions exist only as images in the source PDF) and 2015 stops at question 90 — both are down-weighted, never scored against.
Detected by cosine similarity over question stems with every numeral masked, so a question re-asked with different numbers still matches. Whole multi-question puzzle sets get lifted intact.
| Question | Appeared in | Gap |
|---|---|---|
| Clock: when do the needles coincide between 3 and 4 o'clock | 2018 Q80/Q85 → 2022 Q87 | 4 yr |
| "Five houses lettered A–E in a row" puzzle set | 2009 Q61–65 → 2012 Q86–88 | 3 yr |
| "Family of six, two married couples" puzzle set | 2015 Q12–15 → 2017 Q92–94 | 2 yr |
| "Nine individuals, three committees" puzzle set | 2018 Q113 → 2020 Q21–22 | 2 yr |
| "A–G travelling in three vehicles" puzzle set | 2024 Q61–63 → 2025 Q104 | 1 yr |
| Two-plant factory, defective item, Bayes | 2019 Q13 → 2023 Q103 | 4 yr |
| Tangent to x = a·cos2t, y = 2√2·a·sin t | 2015 Q45 → 2023 Q112 | 8 yr |
| "EXAMINATION coded as 56149512965" | 2015 Q35 → 2016 Q37 | 1 yr |
| Synonym: DEBACLE | 2018 Q24 → 2022 Q64 | 4 yr |
| Caterpillar climbing a 75-inch pole | 2017 Q105 → 2018 Q89 | 1 yr |
| Circle touching the X-axis and a circle at (0,3) | 2015 Q70 → 2023 Q57 | 8 yr |
| Syllogism: "All mangoes are golden in colour" | 2018 Q96 → 2022 Q71 | 4 yr |
| City literacy ratio (40% adults illiterate) | 2018 Q76 → 2020 Q10 | 2 yr |
| Bootstrap loader: first instruction location | 2008 Q110 → 2017 Q30 | 9 yr |
Read this as a study order: a 2-year gap points at 2025, a 4-year gap at 2023. Those two papers should be the ones you can recognise on sight.
Each method predicted year Y using only papers up to Y−1, scored against the real paper, for every target from 2016 to 2026. Error is in questions per topic.
| Method | Mean abs. error | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| EWMA α = 0.20 selected | 1.431 | Exponentially decaying weights over all 19 years |
| EWMA α = 0.35 | 1.436 | Faster decay, more weight on recent papers |
| Blend 45/30/25 | 1.464 | Last year + 3-year mean + all-time mean |
| Median of last 5 | 1.469 | Robust to a single odd year |
| Mean of last 5 | 1.493 | Flat recent window |
| Linear regression | 1.591 | Extrapolates the trend line |
| Last year only | 1.703 | Assume 2027 = 2026 |
Only two topics show a statistically significant trend across 2008–2025: Statistics is rising (Mann-Kendall τ = +0.57, p = 0.002) and Logical deduction puzzles are falling (τ = −0.44, p = 0.012). Everything else is stationary noise — which is exactly why mean-reverting methods beat trend-following ones here.
Ranked by marks at stake against effort, at 12 marks per question.
| Priority | Area | Q | Marks | Why it ranks here |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tier S | Number systems & Boolean logic | 10 | 120 | Biggest single block in the paper; mechanical and fully learnable |
| Tier S | Logical puzzles & conditional grouping | 10 | 120 | Largest Reasoning block and the most-recycled question type |
| Tier S | Calculus | 8 | 96 | Largest Math topic, stable for 19 years, zero syllabus risk |
| Tier S | Algebra & progressions | 8 | 96 | Absorbed the vector slots — 11 questions in 2026 |
| Tier S | Trigonometry | 7 | 84 | Height & distance appears almost every single year |
| Tier A | Architecture, OS & memory hierarchy | 7 | 84 | Grew with the doubled Computer section |
| Tier A | Coordinate & conic geometry | 6 | 72 | Circle first — it is the most repeated sub-form |
| Tier A | Arithmetic word problems | 6 | 72 | Sits in the Reasoning section, not Mathematics |
| Tier A | Sets, relations & functions | 5 | 60 | Rising; absorbed vector slots |
| Tier A | Probability | 5 | 60 | Present in all 19 papers |
| Tier B | Series, coding-decoding, syllogism | 12 | 144 | Low effort, high volume — drill patterns, not theory |
| Tier B | Blood relations, seating, clocks, direction | 9 | 108 | Fully mechanical once you have a notation |
| Tier B | Statistics | 3 | 36 | The one significantly rising Math topic |
| Tier B | Grammar & vocabulary | 5 | 60 | English is only 10 questions now — cap your time |
| Skip | Vector algebra, para jumbles, verbal analogy, linear programming | 0 | 0 | Removed from syllabus or absent for 8+ years |
Read this before you trust any number above.