What are the pass marks in the IOE entrance exam?
There is no fixed published pass mark. IOE sets a minimum percentage of the total for each year, and only candidates at or above it are named in the merit list.
IOE does not publish a fixed pass mark for the entrance, and no number in the booklet answers this question. What the booklet sets out instead is a procedure. Section 4 states that the total entrance marks expressed as a percentage become your Entrance Score, and that the merit list carries only the names of candidates whose score is at or above a minimum percentage that IOE itself sets. Page 3 of the same booklet attributes that minimum to the Institute’s Academic Council. The figure is decided for each cycle rather than fixed in advance, and it becomes visible only when the merit list is published, because the lowest score on the list is the threshold for that year. The practical answer is that there is no mark to aim at. Your position on the list is what decides everything after it, not a pass or fail line.
Why does IOE not publish a number?
Because the threshold is set against each year’s paper and each year’s candidates rather than against a standing rule. The booklet gives the Academic Council the power to fix it and does not constrain the value, so a percentage quoted from a previous cycle carries no authority over the current one.
The consequence for a candidate is that no revision target exists. A score that would have cleared one year’s list is not evidence about the next, and the only figure that matters after results is your rank rather than your percentage.
So what does “passing” the IOE entrance mean?
It means your name appears in the merit list IOE publishes at entrance.ioe.edu.np. That list is the whole of the outcome: appearing on it makes you eligible to apply for campus admission, and being absent from it ends the attempt for that cycle. For the 2083 intake the result was published on 4 August 2026 and the list that followed ran to more than seven thousand names.
Appearing on the merit list is not the same as holding a seat. Every campus and college allocation runs off your position in that list afterwards, through a separate portal, and the list itself promises nothing beyond eligibility to apply.
What about a quoted 37%, 40% or 50% cut-off?
Treat any standing percentage as unsourced until you can point at the clause it comes from. No such figure appears in the 2083 booklet. One reason these numbers circulate is that the booklet is typeset in a legacy Nepali font whose text extracts wrongly, and a bad extraction of the eligibility section produces plausible percentages that are not in the printed document at all.
Section 4, printed page 12, and the merit-list notice on printed page 2, both read off rendered page images rather than extracted text. Section 3.2.4 on printed page 11 states the consequence, that only applicants named in the merit list may apply for campus admission. The 4 August 2026 result date and the absence of any past-paper or cut-off archive were checked on entrance.ioe.edu.np on 31 August 2026. The booklet PDF was re-downloaded the same day and is unchanged.
Sources
- IOE B.E./B.Arch Booklet 2083 · published 7 August 2026 · read 18 August 2026
- IOE Entrance Examination Board portal · read 18 August 2026
Last reviewed by Ram Raj Thapa, Admissions Officer, Imperial College of Engineering. Every figure on this page is cited to the document it came from.