NMMS Question Papers & Answer Keys 2017-2026 PDF Download: This page collects every Tamil Nadu NMMS question paper and answer key we have, from 2017 right through to January 2026. Both papers are here — MAT (Mental Ability Test) and SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) — and all of them are free PDFs you can download and print.
The National Means-cum-Merit Scholarship is written by 8th standard students, and the scholarship that follows runs through to Class 12. That makes one exam morning worth a fair bit of practice.
| Years covered | 2017 to 2026 |
| Papers | MAT and SAT |
| Total downloads | 23 PDFs |
| Who it’s for | 8th standard students, parents, teachers |
NMMS 2026 Question Papers and Answer Keys
The January 2026 exam is the one to study first. Both papers and both keys are available.
| Paper | Download |
|---|---|
| MAT Question Paper 2026 | Download PDF |
| SAT Question Paper 2026 | Download PDF |
| MAT Answer Key 2026 | Download PDF |
| SAT Answer Key 2026 | Download PDF |
A suggestion worth following: download the question papers now and leave the answer keys closed until your child has finished the paper. A key opened too early turns practice into reading.
NMMS 2025 Question Papers and Answer Keys
2025 is the best-covered year on this site. Several teachers prepared keys independently, which is genuinely useful — if an answer is disputed, you can compare two versions and work out which reasoning holds.
| Paper | Prepared by | Download |
|---|---|---|
| MAT Question Paper 2025 | — | Download PDF |
| SAT Question Paper 2025 | — | Download PDF |
| MAT Official Answer Key with Question Paper | Mr. S K Senthil Kumar | Download PDF |
| MAT Answer Key with Solutions | Mr. A. Venkatachalam | Download PDF |
| MAT Answer Key | Mr. A. Venkatachalam | Download PDF |
| SAT Answer Key | — | Download PDF |
| MAT & SAT Answer Keys | Mr. Mohan | Download PDF |
NMMS 2024 and 2023 Question Papers with Answer Keys
For these two years the question paper and the answer key come bundled in a single PDF, all four prepared by Mrs. M. Bhavani.
| Year | Paper | Download |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | MAT Question Paper with Answer Key | Download PDF |
| 2024 | SAT Question Paper with Answer Key | Download PDF |
| 2023 | MAT Question Paper with Answer Key | Download PDF |
| 2023 | SAT Question Paper with Answer Key | Download PDF |
Older NMMS Question Papers (2017 to 2021)
These are question papers only, no keys. They are still worth doing — question styles in NMMS change slowly, and ten papers of practice beats three.
| Year | Paper | Download |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | MAT & SAT Question Paper | Download PDF |
| 2020 | MAT Question Paper | Download PDF |
| 2020 | SAT Question Paper | Download PDF |
| 2019 | MAT Question Paper | Download PDF |
| 2019 | SAT Question Paper | Download PDF |
| 2018 | MAT Question Paper | Download PDF |
| 2018 | SAT Question Paper | Download PDF |
| 2017 | MAT Question Paper | Download PDF |
All eight were shared by Mrs. M. Bhavani.
MAT and SAT: what each paper actually asks for
Students often treat both papers the same way. They shouldn’t.
MAT — Mental Ability Test. Nothing here comes from the textbook. It is reasoning: patterns, series, analogies, coding, figures that rotate or flip. A student who has never seen this style of question will struggle on exam day even if their school marks are excellent. That is exactly why the past papers matter more for MAT than for anything else.
SAT — Scholastic Aptitude Test. This one does follow the syllabus, drawing on science, social science and maths from the 7th and 8th standard books. If the basics are solid, SAT rewards that directly.
So the split is simple. SAT improves when your child revises the textbook. MAT improves only when your child does more MAT questions. Give the reasoning paper the extra hours — it is the one where practice moves the mark fastest.
These papers and keys exist here because teachers took the trouble to prepare and share them — Mrs. M. Bhavani, Mr. A. Venkatachalam, Mr. S K Senthil Kumar and Mr. Mohan. Keys like these are usually typed up in the evenings after a full teaching day, and they save thousands of students a great deal of guesswork.
If you have an NMMS paper or key we haven’t listed, send it across and we’ll add it with your name on it.
Bookmark this page — it gets updated each year as the new papers come out.
