December Code

TCS · TCS NQT (Ninja, Digital, Prime) · pattern last verified 29 September 2026

TCS NQT: the test pattern, the three cadres, and how to prepare

The TCS National Qualifier Test is the largest single fresher drive an Indian engineering student is likely to sit. TCS describes it as an online screening exam open to every engineering student in the country, regardless of college, administered on its own TCS iON platform, and it is the route into all three of its entry cadres: Ninja, Digital and Prime. The same sitting serves all three; what differs is how much of the test each cadre is judged on and the bar it must clear.

This page sets out the pattern as TCS publishes it and as prep sites and candidates report it, marks which is which, maps each section to the December Code subject that prepares for it, and ends with a practice set drawn only from pages whose sample questions are already public. It is not a registration guide: dates and eligibility belong to the TCS notification for the cycle you are in.

December Code is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to TCS. This page summarises how TCS NQT (Ninja, Digital, Prime) is publicly described, from the sources listed at the end, checked on 29 September 2026. Where a detail comes from prep sites or candidate reports rather than TCS itself, the page says so. The notification or test invitation for the drive you are sitting is the source of truth, and where it differs from this page, it is right.

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How the process runs

A round is marked official when TCS describes it on its own pages, and commonly reported when the description comes from prep sites and candidate reports.

  1. 1

    Registration on the TCS NextStep portalofficial

    TCS's NQT hiring page walks through the steps: log in to NextStep under the IT category, apply for the drive, choose the skill you want to be evaluated on, choose the in-centre mode and three preferred test centres, and pick three preferred job cities. Communication about the test comes from TCS iON, its test partner.

  2. 2

    The NQT: Foundation and Advancedofficial

    TCS describes the test as two sections. Foundation covers numerical, verbal and reasoning ability; Advanced adds advanced quantitative and reasoning questions and coding. TCS's page says the Advanced section is mandatory for anyone aspiring to a Digital or Prime offer, and that test performance decides whether a candidate qualifies for the Ninja, Digital or Prime interview.

  3. 3

    Interview for the cadre you qualified forcommonly reported

    Prep sites and candidates report a technical interview followed by HR for Ninja, a harder technical interview for Digital, and an extended technical discussion that includes project work for Prime. Some reports add a managerial round. TCS's page confirms interviews happen and that original academic documents are checked at that stage, not their format.

  4. 4

    Offer and onboardingofficial

    TCS states that eligibility is reviewed at every stage and that a candidate found ineligible, or whose declared details do not match, is disqualified. It also states that it never asks for money and that hiring communication never comes from personal email addresses.

What the test asks, and what prepares you for it

4 of 5 sections map to a December Code subject. The rest are named below, not glossed over.

SectionWhat it testsPrepare with
Numerical Ability (Foundation)commonly reportedArithmetic under time: percentages, ratios, profit and loss, time and work, speed and distance, averages, probability and number properties. Commonly reported as 20 questions in 25 minutes, with no negative marking.Aptitude
Verbal Ability (Foundation)commonly reportedReading comprehension, sentence completion, error spotting, para-jumbles and vocabulary. Commonly reported as 25 questions in 25 minutes.not covered here
Reasoning Ability (Foundation)commonly reportedNumber and letter series, coding-decoding, blood relations, direction sense, syllogisms, seating arrangements and data sufficiency. Commonly reported as 20 questions in 25 minutes.Aptitude
Advanced Quantitative and Reasoning (Advanced)commonly reportedThe same families at a harder pitch, with more multi-step problems and puzzles. Commonly reported as 15 questions in 25 minutes.Aptitude
Advanced Coding (Advanced)commonly reportedTwo or three programming problems in about 90 minutes, in C, C++, Java or Python: arrays, strings, sorting, searching and simple data structures, with test cases graded automatically. Reports differ on whether it is two or three problems.DSAJavaPythonC

How the three cadres are decided

TCS's own description is the clearest thing on this page: one test, two parts, and the Advanced part mandatory only if you want Digital or Prime. Prep sites fill in what TCS does not publish: that Ninja is judged on Foundation alone, that Digital and Prime need strong performance across both parts, and that the difference between the three is the cut-off, not the paper. Treat those as commonly reported. What is consistent across every report is the order of difficulty: Foundation is a speed test that most prepared students clear, Advanced is where the field thins.

The practical consequence is that the Foundation section is an elimination gate whatever cadre you are aiming for, and it is aptitude. Numerical and reasoning ability together make up two of its three sections, and they are the two December Code measures directly. Verbal ability is the third, and it is not something this site covers, so it needs its own preparation.

How hard the test is, and where marks go

Reports agree that no section carries negative marking, which changes the strategy: an unanswered question costs exactly what a wrong one does, so every question should get an answer. They also agree that the clock is per section and that you cannot return to a section once it ends. In Foundation, the questions are individually easy; what fails people is the time per question and a small number of families they never drilled, usually series, coding-decoding and the profit-and-loss variants.

In the Advanced coding section, the problems are commonly reported as array, string and sorting problems rather than graph or dynamic-programming ones, and the languages accepted are the ones most campuses teach. The skill that separates candidates is producing a working solution that passes hidden test cases under time, which is the practice of writing correct loops and handling edge cases, not the memory of an algorithm's name.

What the interview asks

Candidate reports for the Ninja and Digital interviews converge on a recognisable set: your final-year project explained end to end, the language you named at registration (arrays, strings, output of a short program), object-oriented concepts with an example, SQL joins and normalisation, a data-structure question such as reversing a linked list or explaining a stack, and a few operating-system or networking definitions. Prime interviews are reported to go deeper on projects and problem-solving. The HR round is short and conventional: relocation, the bond, why TCS.

The subjects behind that list are exactly the ones on this site: object-oriented programming, DBMS, SQL, data structures, operating systems and computer networks, plus the language you chose. A diagnostic in each tells you which of them would cost you the interview, and the topic pages carry the questions in the form interviewers ask them.

How the season runs

TCS runs the NQT in cycles rather than once a year. On the day this page was verified, TCS's hiring page showed the 2026 cycle's registration as opened on 18 February 2026 and closed, with tests from 10 March 2026 onwards for the 2024, 2025 and 2026 batches, and the TCS iON NQT hub listed its next scheduled test for 19 October 2026, with applications closing on 7 October 2026. TCS iON says its tests are scheduled every two to four weeks at its centres, and that a scorecard is valid for two years. What that means for planning: the drive you can register for is on TCS's page, not here, and a score can be improved in a later sitting.

TCS iON also sells the NQT to other employers. Its hub says the score is accepted by thousands of corporates for IT and non-IT roles, so a sitting taken for TCS can be reused elsewhere. This page is about the TCS hiring drive; the paid TCS iON NQT products it lists are a separate decision.

What December Code covers here, and what it does not

The diagnostic and practice cover Aptitude, DSA, OOP, DBMS, SQL, Java, Python, C: the subjects behind 4 of the 5 sections above. It does not cover the following, and no page here pretends to:

  • Verbal Ability: reading comprehension, grammar and vocabulary are a third of the Foundation section and are not tested or practised here.
  • A coding environment: the Advanced coding problems are written in an IDE against hidden test cases. December Code prepares the data-structure thinking and the language traps in MCQ form; it does not run your code.
  • Registration, eligibility, test-centre and document questions: every one of them belongs to TCS's NQT page and TCS iON.

What could not be confirmed from TCS

  • The section-wise question counts and durations (65 Foundation questions in 75 minutes, 18 Advanced questions in 115 minutes, 190 minutes in all) come from prep sites, not from a TCS page we could read; TCS's own pattern tab did not render in our check.
  • Whether the coding section has two or three problems: FacePrep reports three, GeeksforGeeks reports two, both for 2026.
  • Cadre cut-offs of any kind. Nothing here states a score that gets Ninja, Digital or Prime, because TCS does not publish one.

A practice set for TCS NQT (Ninja, Digital, Prime)

Topic pages in the subjects this process tests, each with the questions interviewers ask and one question from the bank exactly as the diagnostic asks it. Nothing is published for this page: every sample was already public on its topic page.

Aptitude8 pages
  1. Percentage aptitude questionsThe base of profit and loss, interest and most of the numerical section; the fastest family to make automatic.
  2. Time and work questionsA fixture of every reported Foundation paper, and the family where a wrong method costs the most time.
  3. Time, speed and distance questionsRelative speed and trains appear in nearly every candidate report of the numerical section.
  4. Probability questionsReported in both the Foundation and the Advanced quantitative sections.
  5. Number series questionsThe reasoning section's most common opener; recognising the rule fast is the whole skill.
  6. Coding-decoding questionsAlongside series, the reasoning family reported most often.
  7. Blood relations questionsA reasoning staple that is slow only until the notation is learned.
  8. Permutations and combinations questionsThe Advanced quantitative section leans on counting and probability.
DSA4 pages
  1. Array and two-pointer interview questionsThe reported shape of most Advanced coding problems: arrays with a condition to satisfy in one pass.
  2. String interview questionsString manipulation is the other reported family in the coding section.
  3. Sorting algorithm interview questionsSorting and its complexity come up in both the coding section and the interview.
  4. Linked list interview questionsReversing a list and detecting a cycle are the interview's most reported data-structure questions.
OOP2 pages
  1. Inheritance interview questionsThe interview's object-oriented questions start with inheritance and its example.
  2. Polymorphism interview questionsCompile-time versus run-time polymorphism is the follow-up interviewers reach for.
DBMS1 page
  1. Normalization interview questionsThe DBMS question reported most often in TCS interviews.
SQL1 page
  1. SQL JOIN interview questionsThe SQL question that follows normalisation in nearly every report.
Java1 page
  1. Java OOP interview questionsFor a candidate who names Java at registration, the language questions interviewers ask.
Python1 page
  1. Python functions interview questionsFor a candidate who names Python, the traps a short program is built around.
C1 page
  1. C pointer interview questionsFor a candidate who names C, the topic no interviewer skips.

How the diagnostic asks it

One public question per subject, the same one its hub shows. The answer is marked because these are public; in a sitting you choose first, then see why each option is right or wrong.

Aptitude · Percentages · easyAPT-001

In a class of 80 students, 65% passed the mathematics exam. How many students passed?

  1. 155
  2. 252correct
  3. 360
  4. 448

65% of 80 = (65/100) x 80 = 52. So 52 students passed the exam.

More on this topic: Percentage aptitude questions

DSA · Arrays & Two Pointers · easyDSA-032

Which of the following operations on an unsorted array of n integers takes O(n) time in the worst case?

  1. 1Finding the maximum elementcorrect
  2. 2Appending an element at the end when spare capacity already exists
  3. 3Reading the element at index k
  4. 4Reading the array's length

In an unsorted array the maximum could be anywhere, so every element must be examined: O(n). Indexed reads are O(1) because the address is computed from the base and the index; appending into existing spare capacity just writes one slot, O(1); and the length is stored, so reading it is O(1). Only a sorted array would let the maximum be read directly.

More on this topic: Array and two-pointer interview questions

Measure it

Knowing the pattern tells you what is coming. A diagnostic tells you what you would get wrong.

10 Aptitude questions across its topics, easy to hard, about fifteen minutes. You get a readiness figure with the arithmetic shown, the topics you missed named, and a practice set sized for today. Free: 1 diagnostic a month and 15 problems a day. No card.

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What the readiness test measures · how the score is computed

Sources, and when they were checked

Pattern last verified 29 September 2026, against the pages below. Patterns change between drives and cycles; when a source changes, this page changes and the date moves with it. A source marked official is TCS’s own; the others are the established prep sites and candidate reports the “commonly reported” details come from.

By Harshit · updated