Fifteen days is enough for NISM Series V-A for most people. The exam is broad rather than deep, the pass mark is 50%, and there is no negative marking.
What ruins plans is reading the 318-page workbook front to back. Its chapters are not equally weighted, so page order spends your freshest days on 8-mark material and leaves the 15-mark chapters for when you are tired. This plan follows the marks instead.
The principle
Two chapters — Investor Services and Scheme Selection — are 15 marks each. That is 30 of 100, against a pass mark of 50. Get those two genuinely solid and you are more than half way there before touching anything else.
See the full weightage table for the ordering this plan follows.
Days 1–4: the 30-mark pair
Day 1–2 — Investor Services. Account opening and KYC, purchase and redemption, cut-off timing and applicable NAV, time stamping, SIP/SWP/STP, nomination and transmission, the CAS.
Do not read this chapter twice. Read it once, then answer questions on it. It is a list of rules, and re-reading a list produces recognition rather than recall — you will feel prepared and then fail to retrieve it under time pressure.
Day 3–4 — Scheme Selection. The four risk-return hierarchies, core and satellite, matching scheme to need and horizon, and the selection parameters. Write the hierarchies out from memory each morning until they come without effort.
Practise Investor Services and Scheme Selection free — 43 questions each, three free in every chapter.
Days 5–9: the 36-mark tier
Day 5 — Legal and Regulatory Framework (10). SEBI's regulations, the trust structure and who answers to whom, AMFI's code, KYC and PMLA, SCORES.
Day 6 — Scheme Related Information (10). SID, SAI, KIM and which accompanies the form; the riskometer; benchmarks; addenda.
Day 7 — Investment Landscape (8). Savings against investment, risk and return, inflation and real return, compounding.
Day 8–9 — NAV, TER and Pricing (8). The one chapter with real arithmetic. Work every calculation by hand: NAV from assets and liabilities, applicable NAV under the cut-off rules, TER slabs. Do not read the worked examples — redo them.
Days 10–12: the remaining 28 marks
Day 10 — Risk, Return and Performance (7) and Scheme Performance (7). Standard deviation, beta, Sharpe, tracking error; benchmarking, rolling returns.
Day 11 — Concept and Role (6) and Fund Distribution (6). Scheme categories, ETFs; ARN, EUIN, trail commission and conduct.
Day 12 — Legal Structure (4) and Taxation (4). Small, finite, and entirely learnable in a day.
Days 13–15: papers only
Stop studying chapter by chapter. Sit full 100-question papers under the clock, at the same time of day as your real slot, in one sitting, phone away.
After each paper, do the part that matters: review every wrong answer and decide which kind it was.
- A fact you did not know → go back to that chapter.
- A fact you knew but misread → slow down on the wording, not the content.
- A calculation slip → drill that calculation.
Only the first is fixed by more studying. Most candidates lose more marks to the second than they expect.
Take a full-length timed mock scored to the real 50% pass mark. There are four papers, each with three free preview questions.
What score means ready
Aim for 65% or better on timed mocks before you book. The pass mark is 50, and that margin absorbs a bad day, an unfamiliar question set and the two or three careless errors everyone makes under pressure.
Sitting at 50–55% in practice means you are one bad paper from paying the ₹1,500 fee twice.
Exam-day rules for V-A specifically
- Answer all 100 questions. No negative marking means a blank is a guaranteed zero and a guess is not.
- Pace at about 70 seconds a question. That leaves roughly 20 minutes to revisit flagged items.
- Read twice on anything with "not", "cannot", "minimum" or "within". V-A is full of questions that hinge on one word.
If you have less than 15 days
Compress, in this order: the 30-mark pair, then NAV and pricing, then regulation and scheme documents, then two full papers. That is the highest-scoring path through the syllabus if time runs short.
Start now — free V-A practice, no signup. Then a timed mock to find out where you actually stand.