The TG SET English cutoff reached 69.33% in 2025, a sharp increase from 52% in 2024. With the 2026 examination now over, candidates are likely to be watching whether the cutoff remains at last year's level or moves lower.
An analysis of the English question paper conducted on September 30, 2026, in Shift 2 suggests a moderate-to-difficult examination, with a combination of direct questions, literary chronology, matching exercises and conceptual topics.
While the paper's difficulty offers some insight into candidates' likely performance, it is too early to conclude whether the cutoff will decline.
The previous three years' official cutoff figures show considerable variation in the English subject.
2023: 57.33%
2024: 52%
2025: 69.33%
The general category cutoff fell by 5.33 percentage points between 2023 and 2024 before increasing by 17.33 percentage points in 2025.
In terms of marks out of 300, the 2025 cutoff was approximately 208, compared with 156 in 2024 and 172 in 2023.
This makes the 2025 figure an important reference point for candidates assessing their chances of qualification this year.
However, the sharp increase also shows why relying on a single year's cutoff can be misleading.
A review of the September 30 Shift 2 English paper indicates that Paper II required preparation across several literary periods, genres and theoretical approaches.
Questions covered Restoration and modern British drama, American literature, Indian writing in English, postcolonial literature, feminist writing, literary criticism and linguistics.
The paper included questions on Wole Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman, Derek Walcott's Dream on Monkey Mountain, Mahesh Dattani's Dance Like a Man and modern British playwrights.
Several questions tested familiarity with established authors and works. Others required candidates to connect literary movements with writers or arrange works chronologically.
The paper included a question asking candidates to arrange plays by John Osborne, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard in chronological order.
Another required the correct sequence of twentieth-century American plays by Tennessee Williams, Eugene O'Neill, Lorraine Hansberry and Tony Kushner.
Such questions require knowledge of multiple works and their dates. Candidates who recognised individual titles but were uncertain about their chronological order may have found them more demanding.
Matching questions involving dramatic techniques and playwrights also required candidates to distinguish between closely related literary concepts.
At the same time, the paper included comparatively direct questions on well-known writers, quotations and literary terminology.
This combination supports a preliminary assessment of moderate to difficult rather than uniformly difficult.
The question paper analysis provides some grounds for considering a lower cutoff than the 69.33% recorded in 2025, particularly if the more demanding questions affected scores across a substantial section of candidates.
However, this remains a possibility rather than a prediction.
A difficult paper does not automatically produce a lower cutoff. The final qualifying threshold also depends on the performance of candidates who appeared for English, the number of candidates considered for qualification and the applicable category-wise selection rules.
It is also important to distinguish between the minimum marks required to be considered for qualification and the final subject-wise cutoff.
The historical figures show that the English cutoff has moved substantially in both directions. They do not establish a reliable numerical range for 2026.
