There is no fixed NET score that gets you into NUST. Admission goes by merit position, and your NET score is 75% of an aggregate that also counts your SSC and HSSC marks. What you can work out is the NET score that puts you at a given aggregate, and this post shows you how to do it with your own marks.
Key facts
- NET 75%, HSSC 15%, SSC 10% of the aggregate
- A-Level final-year: NET 75%, O-Level equivalence 25%
- NET is 200 MCQs in 180 minutes with no negative marking
- Your best NET score across the cycle's series is used
- NUST publishes no minimum NET score and no fixed cutoff
Source: NUST merit criteria page, checked October 2026
Why nobody can give you one number
Search this question and you will find confident answers: 140, 150, 160. None of them come from NUST. NUST's merit criteria page gives the weights and nothing else. There is no published pass mark, and the selection process page describes admission by merit position and programme preference, not by a threshold.
The score you "need" depends on three things that change every year:
- Which discipline you are competing in. Engineering, Computing, Business and Applied Sciences are ranked separately.
- Your own school marks, because they make up a quarter of the aggregate.
- How everyone else did that year, which nobody knows in advance.
A better question is: what NET score gets you to the aggregate you are aiming for, given your marks? That has an exact answer.
What one NET mark is worth
Start with the weights.
aggregate = (NET / 200) * 75 + HSSC% * 0.15 + SSC% * 0.10
one NET mark = 75 / 200 = 0.375 aggregate points
one percent HSSC = 0.15 aggregate points
one percent SSC = 0.10 aggregate points
Ten more NET marks add 3.75 aggregate points. Getting the same 3.75 points from HSSC would take 25 percentage points. This is why NET is the only part you can still move in a big way: your school marks are mostly fixed by the time you sit it.
NET score vs aggregate, for three students
Here are three made-up students with different school results. The numbers are straight from the formula, using percentages for SSC and HSSC.
| NET out of 200 | Student A: HSSC 70%, SSC 75% | Student B: HSSC 80%, SSC 85% | Student C: HSSC 90%, SSC 92% |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100 | 55.50 | 58.00 | 60.20 |
| 120 | 63.00 | 65.50 | 67.70 |
| 130 | 66.75 | 69.25 | 71.45 |
| 140 | 70.50 | 73.00 | 75.20 |
| 150 | 74.25 | 76.75 | 78.95 |
| 160 | 78.00 | 80.50 | 82.70 |
| 170 | 81.75 | 84.25 | 86.45 |
| 180 | 85.50 | 88.00 | 90.20 |
Read across a row. Student C's school marks are worth 4.7 more aggregate points than Student A's. That gap equals about 12.5 NET marks. A strong FSc helps, but a candidate with weaker marks can close the gap with one good series.
Working backwards from a target aggregate
Flip the formula to find the NET score you need:
NET needed = (target aggregate - HSSC% * 0.15 - SSC% * 0.10) / 75 * 200
For the same three students:
| Target aggregate | Student A | Student B | Student C |
|---|---|---|---|
| 65 | 126 | 119 | 113 |
| 70 | 139 | 132 | 127 |
| 75 | 152 | 146 | 140 |
| 80 | 166 | 159 | 153 |
NET scores are whole marks, so round up. If your answer is above 200, the target is out of reach on NET basis, and it is time to look at other preferences.
Where the target aggregate comes from
This is the part nobody can do for you. NUST's admission procedure page says closing merit for the previous session's programmes "will be available on the website for guidance". When we checked in October 2026, we could not find that document on nust.edu.pk or the admissions portal. So we will not quote closing aggregates here, and you should be careful with anyone who does without a link to NUST.
What you can do:
- Ask seniors who were admitted to your target programme for their actual aggregate and the list they were selected in. A first-list aggregate and a final-list aggregate are different numbers.
- Treat any figure you collect as a rough band, not a cutoff. The applicant pool changes every year.
- Aim above the band. A few aggregate points of margin is a handful of NET marks.
The closing merit post goes deeper on how to estimate closing figures without official data.
What a given NET score takes
Knowing you need 150 is useful only if you know what 150 means in practice. NET-Engineering is 50% Mathematics, 30% Physics and 20% English by NUST's published weights. That works out to a derived 100, 60 and 40 MCQs at the 200-question total, though NUST publishes weights, not counts.
A rough way to think about it: with no negative marking, every question you leave blank is a free mark thrown away, so answer all 200. Beyond that, most of the room between 130 and 160 sits in Mathematics, because it carries half the paper. The what a 170 in NET takes post breaks down a high score subject by subject.
A-Level candidates
If you are in A-Level final year with no A-Level result yet, your formula is different:
aggregate = (NET / 200) * 75 + O-Level equivalence% * 0.25
Each NET mark is still worth 0.375 points. Each percentage point of O-Level equivalence is worth 0.25, more than HSSC is worth for FSc students. With 80% equivalence, NET 150 gives 56.25 + 20.00 = 76.25. The A-Level guide covers the IBCC side.
FAQ
Is 140 a good NET score?
It depends on your school marks and your target discipline. With HSSC 80% and SSC 85%, a 140 gives an aggregate of 73.00. Whether that is enough depends on that year's merit list, which NUST does not publish in advance.
What is the minimum NET score for NUST?
NUST publishes no minimum NET score. It publishes an eligibility floor of 60% in both SSC and HSSC, and the weights of the merit formula.
Can a high NET score cover low FSc marks?
Partly. Each NET mark is worth 0.375 aggregate points against 0.15 for each HSSC percentage point. But you still need at least 60% in SSC and HSSC to be eligible at all.
Which NET score counts if I take it more than once?
Your best score. NUST picks the highest score across the series you sat in the same admission cycle.
