Read across a row for one year’s full picture; read down a column to see how a stage has moved. The first thing the data shows is that cut-offs do not move in one direction — the Phase 1 UR figure fell nearly twelve marks between 2021 and 2022, then climbed back over the next two years.

This is the single biggest source of confusion among candidates, and it comes from the merit-versus-qualifying split introduced in the 2021 pattern:

So a UR cut-off of 47.00 in 2024 means 47 out of the 100 merit marks — not 47 out of 200. In percentage terms that is 47%, which sounds low until you remember it is drawn from only ESI, ARD and General Awareness.

NABARD Grade A 2025 Select List vs Wait List Cut Off out of 250

NABARD publishes two separate final cut-offs — the select list (offered appointment) and the wait list (next in line if a selected candidate does not join). The gap between them tells you how narrow the final margin really is.

The 2025 cycle ran on this timeline: notification 8 November 2025, Phase 1 on 20 December 2025, Phase 2 on 25 January 2026, final result 8 May 2026. Full details are in our official notification breakdown.

NABARD Grade A 2025 Discipline-Wise Cut Off — all 14 RDBS disciplines

This is the section most cut-off pages skip. Vacancies are earmarked discipline-wise and merit lists are prepared discipline-wise, so a specialist candidate’s real benchmark is their own discipline — not the General figure.

NABARD Grade A 2025 Cut Off — Legal and Protocol & Security

Sectional cut-offs are applied on individual tests before the overall total is considered. This table tracks every section across four years for the Unreserved category.

What the sectional history shows

• General Awareness collapsed in 2024 — from 2.75 in 2023 to 1.25 out of 20, the sharpest fall of any section, pointing to a markedly tougher GA paper.
• ESI & ARD Descriptive rose every single year — 21.25 → 23.75 → 31.00 → 32.00 out of 50. Candidates have adapted to descriptive writing, which means the bar keeps rising.
• General English in Mains climbed steadily — 50.25 to 54.00 out of 100, indicating stricter evaluation and stronger competition.
• Decision Making never exceeded 2.00 out of 10 in any year — the lowest-impact section on the paper, and evidence that separate preparation for it is wasted time.

Observation. Every category moved in the same direction each year, which indicates the driver is paper difficulty rather than category-specific competition. The 2022 crash is visible across all five categories simultaneously.

Observation. Phase 2 behaves almost opposite to Phase 1. The year Phase 1 crashed (2022), Phase 2 rose to its highest UR figure of the period. A harder prelims lets through a smaller, stronger pool — which then pushes the Mains cut-off up.

Phase 1, Phase 2 and final cut-offs use different denominators — 100, 200 and 250 — so plotting the raw marks on one chart would be meaningless. Converting each to a percentage of maximum marks makes them genuinely comparable:

Cut-off percentage = cut-off marks ÷ maximum marks × 100

Normalising reveals what raw marks hide: the Phase 1 bar is far lower in percentage terms than either later stage. Clearing prelims has needed roughly 42% to 54% of the merit marks, while the final stage has demanded between 66% and 69% — a gap of more than twenty percentage points. Prelims is a filter; the final list is won on Phase 2 and the interview.

• Candidates must clear the minimum cut-off in individual tests and total score in Phase 2, and must have appeared in the mandatory Psychometric Test, to be shortlisted for interview.
• The calling ratio for interview is a maximum of 1:3, reducible at the Bank’s discretion.
• Because vacancies are earmarked discipline-wise, merit lists are prepared discipline-wise — your competition is within your own discipline.
• Ties are broken by higher Mains marks, then higher qualification or graduation marks, then seniority in age.

Note: selection structures can change between cycles. Verify the applicable rule against each year’s official notification before relying on it.

It is the most repeated claim in exam forums, and the data does not support it as a rule.

The honest formulation is:

• Vacancies set the number of selections, not the difficulty of the paper. They influence how far down the merit list the line falls, but not where candidates’ scores cluster.
• Difficulty moves all categories together. When a cut-off change appears uniformly across UR, OBC, EWS, SC and ST — as in 2022 — difficulty is the likelier cause.
• Vacancy effects are discipline-specific. Since merit lists are discipline-wise, a change in General posts says nothing about a specialist discipline’s cut-off.

What you can do is set a defensible preparation target. The principle: aim clearly above the highest cut-off in recent years, not the average, so that a hard paper does not eliminate you.

Two rules to apply alongside those numbers:

1. Clear every sectional bar comfortably. The overall target is worthless if you fail a qualifying section. Treat roughly double the historical sectional cut-off as your working minimum in each qualifying section.
2. Track your merit-section score separately in every mock. Your Phase 1 result is decided entirely by General Awareness, ESI and ARD — so a mock score of 130 out of 200 tells you nothing until you know how much of it came from those three.

Why specialist cut-offs behave differently:

• Very small vacancy counts. A discipline with one or two posts can swing dramatically year to year on the performance of a handful of candidates.
• Different Paper II. Specialists write a stream-specific Paper II, so their Phase 2 marks are not comparable with the General ESI & ARD paper.
• Smaller applicant pools make the statistics noisier and less useful as a benchmark.

Specialist discipline cut-offs will be added here only where complete, verified official data is available for the full period — labelled discipline-wise, never merged with General.