MHT‑CET exam pattern: PCM and PCB groups, marking and timing

Summary: Both groups get 180 minutes. Physics and Chemistry come first, together, for 90 minutes, and then Maths (PCM) or Biology (PCB) opens for the next 90 minutes. Each paper is worth 100 marks, so the total is 200. There is no negative marking. In 2026 students could also register for a second attempt, and the better total percentile was used for admission.

MHT‑CET is conducted by the State Common Entrance Test Cell, Maharashtra, for admission to engineering, pharmacy, agriculture and a few other courses in the state. It is a computer-based test of multiple choice questions, each with four options and exactly one correct answer. Everything below is from the MHT‑CET 2026 information brochure and the "CET Syllabus and its Marking Scheme" document published on cetcell.mahacet.org. The brochure for the next cycle usually appears in December or January, so read it when it comes out and check for changes before you plan around these numbers.

The two groups

You choose the PCM group (Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics), the PCB group (Physics, Chemistry, Biology), or both. The brochure is clear that the choice cannot be changed once made, and marks in one group are not carried over to the other. Even the Physics and Chemistry percentiles are not interchanged between groups, although the subjects are the same.

Engineering needs PCM. Pharmacy accepts either group. Several agriculture courses accept either, while a few insist on one of them. Our post on the courses the PCB group opens has the details. A student who has taken PCMB in Class 12 and is undecided can write both.

Paper structure

A PCM student writes Papers I and II: 150 questions for 200 marks. A PCB student writes Papers II and III: 200 questions for 200 marks. The Class 11 and Class 12 split in the table is printed in the official syllabus document, which also says that roughly 20% of the weightage goes to Class 11 and 80% to Class 12. Our post on the MHT‑CET syllabus lists the Class 11 chapters that are included.

How the 180 minutes are split

This is the rule that surprises students in their first mock. The paper is not one open block of three hours. For the first 90 minutes only Physics and Chemistry are available. When 90 minutes are over, that section is submitted automatically and Maths or Biology opens for the remaining 90 minutes. You cannot go back to Physics once you are in Maths, and you cannot carry spare time forward.

Work out what that means per question:

The Physics and Chemistry block is where most students run short. Fifty-four seconds is enough for a direct formula question and not enough for a long numerical. Maths has double the time per question and double the marks, which is why a PCM student's rank is often decided by Maths. In the Physics-Chemistry block, a sensible habit is to do Chemistry first if it is your faster subject, since the order inside the block is your choice.

No negative marking

A wrong answer costs nothing. That changes the arithmetic of guessing completely. With four options, a pure guess has a one in four chance of being right. Suppose you reach the last five minutes of Maths with eight questions untouched. Marking a guess on all eight gives you an expected 8 × ¼ = 2 correct answers, which is 4 marks, for about a minute of clicking. Leaving them blank gives you exactly zero. So the rule for MHT‑CET is simple: no question should be left unanswered when the section closes.

This is the opposite of what JEE students are trained to do. In JEE Main every wrong answer costs a mark (see our post on the JEE Main pattern), so students learn to skip. Students preparing for both need to switch habits in the last few weeks, and we cover that in preparing for MHT‑CET and JEE Main together.

Level of the questions

The official syllabus document says the difficulty for Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry will be at par with JEE (Main) and for Biology at par with NEET, and that questions will be mainly application based. In practice the paper is a test of speed on standard questions more than depth on a few hard ones, but students should not read "state exam" as "easy exam". Treat the textbook as the minimum.

Shifts, attempts and the medium

• Shifts: the 2026 brochure listed a morning shift from 9:00 am to 12:00 pm and an afternoon shift from 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm, with gates closing 30 minutes before start in the April update. Your shift is on your admit card.
• Two attempts in 2026: candidates could register for one or both attempts of the same group. The PCM first attempt ran from 11 to 20 April 2026 and the second from 12 to 20 May 2026, according to the CET Cell's result notifications. Where a candidate wrote both, the better of the two total percentiles was used for admission; subject percentiles were not mixed between attempts.
• Normalisation: because different shifts get different papers, raw marks are converted to a percentile within each shift. Our post on percentile and CAP rounds works through an example.
• Medium: Physics, Chemistry and Biology can be taken in English, Marathi or Urdu, selected at the time of application and not changeable later. In any dispute, the English version is treated as final.
• Calculators: none of any kind, including smart watches.

Whether there will be two attempts again, and on which dates, is announced in each year's brochure. Do not assume the 2026 arrangement will repeat until the CET Cell says so.

What the pattern means for preparation

Three things follow from this pattern. First, textbook coverage has to be complete, because 50 or 100 questions per subject leave no chapter unasked. Second, speed on direct questions matters more than in JEE, so timed practice of 25 to 30 question sets is worth more than slow solving of long problems. Third, Maths deserves more hours than its question count suggests, since it carries half the PCM total. The CET Cell releases a mock test link on mahacet.org before the exam; use it at least once to get used to the screen and the automatic switch at 90 minutes.

Our MHT‑CET preparation runs inside the Class 11 and 12 programme, with CET-pattern mocks in the final months.

Common questions