CUET UG 2024 - All You Need To Know To Score A 100 Percentile!

With just around 15 days left for CUET-UG 2024, there are things that a candidate needs to be mindful of. This exam began in 2022, and this is the 3^rd edition of the exam. There are many firsts this year:

As many as 15 subjects will be tested in pen-paper (offline) mode

These are:
Section 1 (languages): English and Hindi
Section 2 (domain subjects):
Science: Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Biology
Arts/Humanities: Political Science, History, Geography, Economics, Sociology
Commerce: Accountancy, Business Studies
Others: Physical Education
Section 3: General Test

There will be no normalisation

For most subjects, tests were conducted in multiple slots in 2022 and 2023. Hence, normalisation was needed to bring different difficulty levels of the tests to par. It is a standard practice. As each subject will be conducted in just one slot this year, normalisation is not needed.
Even if you did not opt for a course or university in your CUET-UG application form, you can still apply for it in the 2nd stage of admissions (while applying to the universities after the declaration of CUET-UG 2024 results). This should give you a lot of flexibility.

Set your targets

The cut-offs for most coveted courses/universities were very high in 2023 and 2022.
B.Com (Hons.) from Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC) of the University of Delhi (DU), 2023 admissions

B.A. (Hons.) in Economics from Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC), 2023 admissions

B.A. (Hons.) in English from St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, 2023 admissions

St. Stephen's College has no quota for OBC-NC and EWS categories.
These tables give you a clear picture of the challenges ahead. You need to score almost 100% on most of your papers for the top courses/colleges. You get 5 marks for a correct response, and 1 mark is deducted for an incorrect response.
You will feel very confident to discover that 1000s of candidates scored 100% on CUET-UG tests last year. Please refer to the following data to understand how scoring different subjects of CUET-UG 2023 were:

Thus, we see that English was much more scoring than Hindi. The General Test was by far the most challenging paper to score in. Except for biology, science subjects took a lot of work to score on.
For a B.Com (Hons.) from the University of Delhi, at least one of Accountancy and Mathematics is needed, and you know that Accountancy is much more scoring than Mathematics. You may strategise accordingly.
Apparently, the cut-offs for B.Com (Hons.) at the University of Delhi were higher than those for B.A. (Hons.) in Economics, but the latter requires a mathematics paper, which is far less scoring than Accountancy or Business Studies. Thus, admission into B.A. (Hons.) in Economics was more difficult than in B.Com (Hons.).

Some interesting facts:

1. There are only two courses at the University of Delhi for which the English Language Test is mandatory: B.A. (Hons.) in English and B.A. (Hons.) in Journalism!  You may take any of the 33 languages for the rest of the courses.
2. You are eligible for a B.Sc. (Hons.) in Mathematics or B.Sc. (Hons.) in Computer Science from the University of Delhi, even if you are from commerce or arts/humanities background, but mathematics should be one of your subjects in class 12 as well as the CUET-UG.
3. The General Test is mandatory for all undergraduate courses from the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), the University of Allahabad, etc.
4. The English Language Test is NOT mandatory for a single course at the Banaras Hindu University (BHU), not even for the English (Hons.)!

Some standard sources for the preparation:

Studying the class 12 NCERT books for any domain-specific subject would be best. However, the NCERT books are not available for some subjects - legal studies, physical education, etc.  Luckily, the CBSE publishes books for these subjects. All these NCERT/CBSE books are available online free of cost (legally!).
The link to the NCERT books: https://ncert.nic.in/textbook.php
The link to the CBSE books: https://cbseacademic.nic.in/publication_sqps.html
Practising questions from NCERT Exemplar for Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Biology is almost mandatory.
Almost all questions in these papers are based on these books. Even the passages for Reading Comprehension are excerpts from these books.
Also, the recently deleted parts of the NCERT books are in the syllabus of CUET-UG 2024. Please do not bother much about it, as there will not be many questions from those chapters. Also, you always have a choice of 10 questions. You need to do 40 out of 50 questions in all domain subjects,
You must do the previous years’ papers of CUET-UG of your subjects. Each subject was conducted in multiple slots in 2022 as well as 2023. Hence, many actual papers of CUET-UG are available for almost every subject. These papers are much more critical for you than the mock tests by some coaching institutes.
You can also refer to the following books written by myself:

• Prep Essentials CUET (UG) Political Science|Fully solved 2023 paper | Chapterwise summed pointers for revision | Digital Question Bank & Mock Tests
• Crack CUET-UG General Test 2024 with a 100%iler | Practice Entrance Exam Oriented 1300+ Previous Year Questions (2022-2023), 20 Mock Test Paper with Answer key, Explanation & Shorcut Tips & Tricks
• Crack NTA CUET-UG English Entrance Exam 2024 with a 100 Percentiler | 20+ Previous Year Solved Papers (2022-23), 1000+ Exam Pattern Questions (MCQ) with detailed Solutions & Expert Tips and Tricks

What to do in the last 15 days?

1. Revision from NCERT/CBSE books
2. Practice from previous years’ papers
You must complete at least ten practice papers for each subject. As these tests are short-duration, you can complete 3 to 4 practice tests daily.
Take a 60-minute test in 57 minutes and a 45-minute test in 43 minutes at home. We need to consider that there will be a lot of pressure in the actual examination, and in many papers, you need to shade the circles on the OMR sheets. After every practice test, please analyse your performance, especially your mistakes.

General Test

A typical General Test in 2023 had this structure:

There were no defined sections of the test. It was a jumbled paper, and you could get a question of any area at any stage. Reasoning questions were the easiest to do.
Even if you practise this part from 15-20 previous years’ papers, that should be sufficient to score well on it. There were not many questions from current affairs in either 2023 or 2022.

English Language Test

A typical English Language Test in 2023 had this structure:

Reading Comprehension was the easiest.
Doing a basic book on grammar and vocabulary would be of immense value.

All the best!