BHU Nursing Officer Syllabus, Exam Pattern, Eligibility

BHU published the scheme in a notice of its Registrar (Administration) dated 28 March 2024. It is the only place the pattern appears; the advertisement says nothing beyond "written test".

Fifty questions in sixty minutes

Seventy-two seconds a question, the tightest clock of any Nursing Officer paper on this site. SGPGI gives 100 marks in two hours; NORCET's Main runs 160 questions in 180 minutes. There is no time to come back to a skipped question or to reason a hard one out from first principles.

The penalty, and the arithmetic it forces

Minus two against plus four is a deduction of half the value of a correct answer, where most nursing papers deduct a quarter or a third. On four options:

Break-even is a three-way guess. Anything worse loses marks, and a blank costs nothing. Practise leaving questions alone, which is the opposite habit from a paper with no penalty.

The swing between answering a question right and answering it wrong is six marks out of 200, and BHU's own published merit list from the previous cycle shows roughly twenty candidates to the mark. One careless wrong answer is worth about a hundred rank positions.

Part A is 60 per cent of the marks, 120 of the 200. BHU publishes no syllabus for either part; the level follows from the essential qualification, a nursing degree or the GNM diploma.

Banaras Hindu University publishes no syllabus for this post. The advertisement of 22 December 2023 gives the essential qualification and the method of selection; the notice of 28 March 2024 gives the mark scheme. The Recruitment and Assessment Cell does publish syllabi for some posts, such as the school teaching positions under Advertisement 24/2023-2024, but not for this one.

What it does define is the level and the split, and those two are enough to build a revision plan.

The curriculum behind the qualification

Since the paper is set at the level of the qualification required, work from the Indian Nursing Council curriculum for the programme you hold. The heads below are the standard divisions of those programmes as they appear in published syllabi of comparable Nursing Officer recruitments, not a BHU specification:

• Anatomy and physiology; microbiology; biochemistry; pharmacology, dosage calculation and drug administration
• Fundamentals of nursing: procedures, asepsis, infection control, patient safety, records and reporting
• Medical and surgical nursing across the body systems, with critical care, emergency and perioperative nursing
• Child health nursing and neonatal care
• Obstetric and gynaecological nursing, and midwifery
• Mental health and psychiatric nursing
• Community health nursing, national health programmes and health education
• Nutrition and dietetics
• Nursing management, administration, education, and professional trends and ethics

Part B is not defined at all

"General Aptitude and Awareness" is the whole of what BHU says about 80 of the 200 marks. Treat it as general reasoning, numerical ability and current awareness at graduate level, and do not spend revision time hunting a specification that does not exist.

The skill test has no published specification either. The advertisement says only that for Group B positions the University holds a written test and then a skill test for those shortlisted from it. In 2024 it ran over six days in four-hour shifts, with the shortlists and dates published but not the content or the marks.

Two routes, both ending in the same post. They differ in the qualification and, critically, in how much experience is required.

There is no experience-free route into this post, which separates BHU from most other Nursing Officer recruitments. At SGPGI, at AIIMS under NORCET and at PGIMER a B.Sc. Nursing graduate is eligible on the day they register. At BHU they are not.

Age, gender and disability

The age limit is 30 years, which is strict beside a compulsory year or two of prior experience: you must qualify, register, work at least a year, and still be under thirty. Compare SGPGI at 40, PGIMER at 35, NORCET at 30 or 35 depending on the institution. Relaxations follow the rules for reserved categories, and the University may relax qualification, experience and age at its discretion for candidates of exceptional merit.

Only men may apply for post code 40003 and only women for 40002. Transgender candidates may apply against either. For both post codes the identified locomotor disabilities are OL (one leg) and AAV (acid attack victims), with seven PwBD posts against the female post and two against the male.

What BHU actually counts as experience

Its own post-verification list is the clearest answer. After document verification BHU published twenty-one candidates "found not fulfilling eligibility criteria as per advertised qualification". Twenty of the twenty-one were rejected on experience, and the reasons are worth reading before applying:

One further candidate was recorded as "Not interested to join", which is not an eligibility finding. Nothing on that list turns on qualification, registration or age. Read your own certificate against those reasons before you pay the fee, because BHU checks nothing until after the skill test.

For Group B posts the advertisement sets out a two-test process: "the University shall conduct a written test. Further, Skill test shall also be conducted for the candidates short-listed from the written test." There is no interview.

The sequence followed in the 2023-24 cycle

1. Online application, then submission of the downloaded hard copy to the Office of the Registrar.
2. City intimation slip, 28 March 2024, through bhu.ntaonline.in.
3. Admit card, 9 April 2024, through the same portal.
4. Written test by the National Testing Agency, 12 April 2024, one hour, 200 marks.
5. Skill test, 1 to 6 July 2024, for 601 female and 128 male candidates.
6. Document verification, phase 1, 21 to 24 August 2024, for 205 candidates, shortlisted on the written test and the skill test together.
7. Document verification, phase 2, for a further 32.
8. Not-eligible list: 21 candidates found, after verification, not to meet the advertised criteria.
9. Final select list: not published as at 12 September 2026.

BHU called no buffer at all

Set the first verification list against the vacancy table and seven of the twelve category blocks match exactly, one candidate per post. A single withdrawal or a single failed verification leaves a post empty, which is what happened, and why a second list of 32 followed. In the other five blocks the University could not fill even the one-for-one list: two candidates against seven PwBD posts for women, one against three ST posts for men. The block-by-block figures are under Result Details.

Nothing is scrutinised until after the skill test

Both the skill test list and the verification list carry the same warning in capitals, "APPLICANTS MUST FULLY SATISFY THEMSELVES ABOUT THEIR ELIGIBILITY AS PRESCRIBED IN THE ADVERTISEMENT", and both add that being inadvertently allowed to appear confers no right. So a candidate can sit an NTA paper, clear it, sit a six-day skill test, travel to Varanasi for verification, and be told there that the year of hospital experience does not count. Twenty-one people were.

What the University reserves to itself

• Withdrawing any advertised post at any time without giving a reason.
• Filling a vacancy that arises at the time of selection from the available candidates, and drawing a panel for future vacancies, so the number of posts can change.
• Relaxing or reviewing qualification, experience and age for candidates of exceptional merit.
• Filling any advertised position by direct recruitment or by deputation.
• Verifying antecedents or documents at any time during service, and terminating on finding a document fake or information suppressed.

₹44,900 is the entry cell and ₹1,42,400 the last cell of Level 7. That is basic pay; allowances are additional and the advertisement does not state them.

The cadre above it

Advertisement 20/2023-2024 advertised the whole nursing cadre at once, which makes the ladder unusually visible.

Nothing sits between Level 7 and Level 11 in that advertisement. Chief Nursing Officer needs an M.Sc. Nursing with eighteen years' experience and Nursing Superintendent an M.Sc. with fifteen or a B.Sc. with eighteen, in each case from a hospital of at least 500 beds.

Level 7 is also what a Nursing Officer earns at SGPGI Lucknow and what the Staff Nurse posts in the Uttar Pradesh autonomous state medical colleges carry. What differs at BHU is the entry cost: a year of hospital experience where those institutions require none, and an age limit of 30 where SGPGI allows 40.

Applying is a two-step process, and the second step is physical. Miss it and the application ends.

1. Online. Register on the Recruitment and Assessment Cell portal at bhu.ac.in/rac and fill in the form. Last date for the 2023-24 cycle: 22 January 2024, 5:00 pm.
2. By hand or post. Send the downloaded hard copy with all enclosures to the Office of the Registrar (Recruitment and Assessment Cell), Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi 221005. Last date: 27 January 2024, 5:00 pm.

The advertisement's first general instruction is explicit: "Online mode of submission of application form shall be essential followed by submission of downloaded hard copy with all enclosures."

Fee

The exemption for women is uncommon, and here it matters: 169 of the 212 vacancies are the female post, so most applicants pay nothing. Group A posts carry a ₹1,000 fee on the same terms. Payment is online by net banking, card or UPI, and the fee is non-refundable.

What to have ready

• Photograph and signature, JPEG, not exceeding 50 KB each
• Degree, diploma and mark sheets
• Registration certificate as Nurse, or Nurse and Midwife, with a State Nursing Council
• Experience certificate showing the hospital, the bed strength and the exact dates
• Category and disability certificates where claimed

Separate applications are needed for different positions, incomplete applications are rejected, and no change is possible after final submission. Technical problems go to recruitment@bhu.ac.in or 0542-2368781.

The experience certificate is the document to get right. Ask the issuing hospital to state all four of the things BHU checks: the bed strength, that the work was paid, that the role was hospital nursing, and the exact dates.

One university, several hospitals inside it. The advertisement puts all the nursing posts under a single sector heading.

The 212 posts are not broken down between them. A selected candidate is appointed to the University and posted within that sector.

The Recruitment and Assessment Cell is the office to watch. It publishes every advertisement, notice, shortlist and result for teaching and non-teaching posts, and holds document verification at Holkar House.

BHU recruits only for itself. It hires the NTA to run the paper; it does not run papers for anyone else, unlike AIIMS New Delhi with NORCET and the Common Recruitment Examination. IMS BHU separately advertises Junior Residents and project or scheme-funded posts, which appear among the University's general notices rather than the Cell's pages and are not this recruitment.

BHU's notice is explicit that the city slip is not the admit card: "this is advance information for the allotment of the city where the examination centre will be located ... The admit card shall be issued later." The city slip is early enough to book travel; the admit card, naming the centre, comes about three days out.

Both are downloaded with the e-mail ID and date of birth on the application form, which is why a mistyped address cannot be fixed later and cannot reach its own admit card.

Document verification, though, is at the Recruitment and Assessment Cell, Holkar House, BHU, Varanasi, on a date named against each candidate in the published list. Bring an extra set of self-attested photocopies of everything attached to the online application. No travelling allowance is offered.

Advertisement No. 20/2023-2024

Four months from advertisement to written test, three more to the skill test, six weeks more to verification. And then more than two years with no final select list. The Recruitment and Assessment Cell has published other results in that period, including school teaching posts examined in August 2026, so its pages are current. The Nursing Officer selection simply has not appeared.

The previous cycle ran under Advertisement No. 06/2018-19, with two nursing post codes, 4479 Nursing Officer and 4503 Nursing Officer (Female). Its online test was on 22 September 2019 and the provisional merit list followed in 2020: roughly a year from paper to merit list.

For the 2023-24 cycle the admit card came from the National Testing Agency, not the University, and it came in two parts.

Both are downloaded from bhu.ntaonline.in with the e-mail ID and date of birth on the application form. Neither is posted.

An admit card decides nothing. BHU's notice says candidates appear "provisionally subject to the final verification", and that appearing in the written test or qualifying in the skill test does not entitle anyone to be considered for appointment. Twenty-one candidates who held an admit card, cleared the paper and sat the skill test were later found ineligible.

Check the city slip the day it is released, since it is the only chance to plan travel. The paper sat from 4:00 pm to 5:00 pm, with reporting time on the admit card.

BHU publishes no marks for this post, only shortlists by roll number. Their sizes against the vacancy table are what tell you how competitive the examination was.

The skill test shortlist

729 in all against 212 category posts, about 3.4 to 1 but wildly uneven: 12 unreserved men called for 19 male posts, 215 OBC women for 45.

Document verification, phase 1

Seven blocks match the vacancy exactly and five fall short of even one candidate per post. A second list of 32 followed, which is the direct consequence of calling no buffer.

Then the not-eligible list: four for Nursing Officer (Male) and seventeen for Nursing Officer (Female), twenty of the twenty-one on experience alone. The reasons are under Eligibility Criteria and are the most useful thing this recruitment has published.

As at 12 September 2026 no select list, appointment list or offer list appears on the Results or Archive pages, two years and five months after the paper. Those pages carry results for other posts published through 2026, so they are current.

No cut-off has been released for the 2023-24 cycle. BHU published shortlists by roll number and no marks, and no final select list had appeared as at 12 September 2026. The one-for-one document verification list is the nearest thing: the last candidate called in each block is, by construction, the last the University thought it could fill the post from.

The previous cycle did publish marks, and they show how tightly packed the field is.

Provisional merit list, Post Code 4479, Advt. No. 06/2018-19

Written test held 22 September 2019, with a score and a category rank against each candidate.

Read the UR row: seventeen marks, 228 down to 211, span rank 154 to rank 516. That is 362 rank positions across 17 marks, roughly 21 candidates a mark. The OBC row says it more sharply: three marks span 67 ranks.

Carry that number into the paper. With +4 for a right answer and −2 for a wrong one, the swing on a single question is six marks, which at twenty candidates a mark is something like a hundred rank positions. A blind guess that misses costs two marks where leaving it blank costs nothing.

The PwD band sits about 90 marks below everyone else, 106 down to 91 against 228 down to 211 in the unreserved list. The 2023-24 cycle then found only two candidates for seven PwBD posts among women. For the identified disabilities on this post, one leg affected and acid attack victims, the pool is very small and the effective bar far lower.

BHU has never published a qualifying percentage for this post, a category-wise last-selected mark for the current cycle, or the marks of the skill test.

1. Check the experience requirement before anything else

One year in a hospital of at least fifty beds on the degree route, two on the diploma route, and no experience-free entry. Twenty of the twenty-one candidates BHU rejected after verification last cycle failed on exactly this, and its reasons rule out a Community Health Officer posting under the NHM, work as a Clinical Instructor or Tutor, unpaid experience, and any hospital under fifty beds. The period must be complete by the closing date, not by the date of verification.

2. Then check your age

Thirty years. You have to qualify, register, work a year or two and still be under thirty. At twenty-nine with eleven months of experience, this recruitment is not open to you.

3. Know which post you are competing for

40002 has 169 category posts and 40003 has 43, with separate merit lists. A male candidate faces a smaller field but far fewer posts, and in the unreserved block the two nearly cancelled out: 12 men called to the skill test against 19 posts.

4. Fifty questions in sixty minutes is the real constraint

Seventy-two seconds each, and 30 of the 50 are nursing. This paper rewards recall you do not have to reconstruct: normal values, drug classes and doses, procedure sequences, the order of steps in an emergency. Practise against a clock from the start.

5. Learn the deduction, then practise obeying it

Plus four, minus two. If you cannot rule out two of the four options, leave it blank. Most candidates have trained on papers where guessing is free and find this hard in the room. Rehearse it.

6. Do not go looking for a BHU syllabus

There isn't one. Work from the Indian Nursing Council curriculum for the qualification you hold, and spend the time you would have spent hunting a specification on timed practice.

Check practice material against the real shape

Material sold for "BHU Nursing Officer" is usually built for 100 questions, two hours and no penalty. This paper is 50 questions in an hour at minus two, so judge anything you buy against the 28 March 2024 notice.

7. Do not neglect Part B

Twenty questions for 80 marks, two fifths of the paper, each worth exactly as much as a nursing question. General reasoning, numerical ability and current awareness at graduate level.

8. Plan for the skill test and the trip to Varanasi

A skill test follows over six days in four-hour shifts with reporting ninety minutes early, then verification at Holkar House. Take an extra set of self-attested photocopies of everything attached to the application; BHU asks for it in writing.

9. Do not forget the hard copy

The downloaded hard copy with all enclosures must reach the Office of the Registrar by the second deadline, five days after the online one. An application that exists only online is incomplete and is rejected.

10. Expect a long wait, and watch the right page

The 2023-24 cycle sat its paper in April 2024, held verification in August 2024 and had published no select list by September 2026. Everything appears on the Recruitment and Assessment Cell's Results and Archive pages.

BHU publishes no question paper, answer key or syllabus for this post. The only statement of the pattern is the notice of 28 March 2024, and the 2018-19 provisional merit list on the Results page is the only published mark data. Practice advice is under Preparation Tips.

Recruitment and Assessment Cell, Holkar House, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi 221005. recruitment@bhu.ac.in, telephone 0542-2368781.

Why are there two Nursing Officer posts at BHU?

BHU advertises the post separately by gender: Nursing Officer (Female) is post code 40002 with 169 category posts, Nursing Officer (Male) is 40003 with 43. Only men may apply for 40003 and only women for 40002, and transgender candidates may apply against either. They are separate competitions with separate shortlists.

Can a fresh B.Sc. Nursing graduate apply?

No. BHU requires experience on both routes: one year in a hospital of at least fifty beds on the degree route, two years on the GNM diploma route, in each case after the qualification.

What counts as experience?

BHU has answered this in practice. Its not-eligible list rules out a Community Health Officer posting in an Ayushman Aarogya Mandir under the National Health Mission, work as a Clinical Instructor or Tutor, unpaid experience, any hospital under fifty beds, and experience not complete by the last date for applying.

What is the age limit?

30 years, which is strict for a post that also requires a year or two of prior hospital experience. The University may relax qualification, experience and age for candidates of exceptional merit.

What is the exam pattern?

A one-hour computer based test of 50 questions for 200 marks: 30 nursing questions for 120 marks and 20 General Aptitude and Awareness questions for 80. Four marks for a correct answer, two deducted for a wrong one. In 2024 it ran on 12 April from 4:00 to 5:00 pm in 40 cities.

Who conducts the written test?

The National Testing Agency. The city slip and admit card come from bhu.ntaonline.in, using the e-mail ID and date of birth on the application.

Should I guess?

Only if you can rule out two of the four options. A blind four-way guess is worth minus half a mark on average, a three-way guess breaks even, a two-way guess gains one. A blank costs nothing.

Is there a syllabus?

BHU publishes none for this post. It gives the mark split and the level, which follows from the essential qualification. Work from the Indian Nursing Council curriculum for the programme you hold.

Is there a skill test?

Yes, and it is real. For this cycle it ran from 1 to 6 July 2024 for 601 female and 128 male candidates, and the verification shortlist that followed rests on the written test and the skill test together. No content or marking scheme has been published for it.

What is the pay?

Level 7, ₹44,900 to ₹1,42,400, Group B. Allowances are additional and are not stated.

What does it cost to apply?

₹500 for UR, EWS and OBC candidates. Nothing for SC, ST and PwD candidates, and nothing for women. Since 169 of the 212 posts are the female post, most applicants pay no fee.

Is applying online enough?

No. The online form must be followed by the downloaded hard copy with all enclosures reaching the Office of the Registrar, Varanasi 221005. In 2023-24 the deadlines were 22 and 27 January 2024. An application that exists only online is incomplete and is rejected.

Does an admit card mean I am eligible?

No. Candidates appear provisionally, subject to final verification, and appearing in the written test or qualifying in the skill test entitles nobody to be considered. Twenty-one candidates reached document verification and were then found ineligible.

What was the cut-off?

None has been published for 2023-24. The verification list is the nearest thing: exactly one candidate per post in seven of the twelve blocks and fewer in the other five. The previous cycle's marks show how packed the field is, with unreserved scores from 228 down to 211 covering ranks 154 to 516.

Has the result been declared?

Not as at 12 September 2026, two years and five months after the paper. The Cell has published the shortlists and the not-eligible list but no select list, while continuing to publish results for other posts.

Is BHU Staff Nurse the same thing?

BHU has no post called Staff Nurse. Its cadre is Nursing Officer at Level 7, then Deputy Nursing Superintendent, Nursing Superintendent at Level 11 and Chief Nursing Officer at Level 12.