ICAR JRF 2023: Notification, Exam Date, Application, News

ICAR JRF 2023 is conducted by National Testing Agency (NTA) for the Junior Research Fellowship on behalf of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). Candidates who wish to outgrow their career in agriculture must check out all the essential information related to the ICAR JRF exams, such as eligibility criteria, syllabus, exam pattern, the scope of Ph.D. in the agriculture field, and other important information related to the examination.

ICAR JRF exam is held across the country in 88 cities to ensure participation in doctoral degree programs in Agriculture, Horticulture, Forestry, Veterinary, Animal Sciences, and Agri. Engineering, Community Science (formerly Home Science), Fisheries, Dairy Science, and other allied sciences.

ICAR JRF Exam Dates will be announced officially on the National Testing Agency website. Candidates preparing for the exam must acquaint themselves with the latest dates for the exam. It is beneficial for the candidates to look at the tentative dates for the ICAR JRF 2023 below.

For the post of Junior Research Fellow, an All Indian Competitive Examination is taken by ICAR. At every college under the ICAR AU system, 25% of seats are reserved for ICAR JRF candidates. The Mode of AICE is Computer Based, containing Objective Type questions. Qualified candidates have to appear for the counseling process, where admission is offered at various colleges on merit. Candidates under the Ph.D. program will receive a monthly stipend according to their specialization. Details of the assistance are listed below:

• Postgraduate under the veterinary program stipends 17500 in the first two years and 18750 in the last year.
• Postgraduates under any program other than veterinary will receive a stipend of 15000/month and 17500 in the last year.
• Besides the stipend, candidates receive a yearly amount of 10000 for other facilities like books and other stuff required for their research.

Around 74 Agricultural Universities comprising 63 State Agricultural, Veterinary, 3 Central Agricultural Universities, 4 ICAR-DUs, viz. IARI, IVRI, NDRI, CIFE, 4 Central Universities (CUs), and more participate in the ICAR AICE JRF exam.

About ICAR- Indian Council Agricultural Research

The Indian Council of Agricultural Research is a government body responsible for coordinating and promoting education and research in agriculture. ICAR has its headquarters in Delhi, and 75 universities come under the ICAR-AU system. A fixed number of seats under these are reserved for the candidates who have applied through the entrance test conducted by ICAR. 

National Testing Agency will release the ICAR JRF 2023 Notification PDF on the official website soon. The notification contains all the information required for the exam cycle, i.e., eligibility, exam pattern, exam dates, syllabus, and more. Candidates must go through the notification to have proper knowledge about the exam. The information given in the advertisement is binding to both students and authorities. Download the previous year's ICAR JRF notification PDF from the link.

ICAR JRF Notification - PDF (2022)

The application form for the ICAR AICE Junior Research Fellowship program 2023 will be available on the official NTA page of ICAR. Candidates need to follow the given steps to apply for the ICAR JRF 2023:

• Visit the official NTA page of ICAR
• There will be a tab at the bottom of the page with a link to the application form.
• Click on the link and proceed to fill out the application.
• Provide your personal information like address, date of birth, and other information, including your educational qualifications.
• Fill in your details and upload your photograph and signature.
• Make the payment and download the application form for future reference.

ICAR JRF Application 2023

While filling out the application, candidates need to have some documents to be uploaded or some information required from the documents. The following documents are required from the candidates:

• Marksheet from class 10 to post-graduation
• Scanned image of the candidates and signature
• A valid source for payment like debit/credit card or net banking

The ICAR JRF exam eligibility consists of various parameters like educational qualification, minimum academic marks, and age limit. Check the detailed ICAR JRF eligibility criteria before applying online.

ICAR AICE JRF/SRF Age Limit

Although there is no maximum age limit for the program, the candidates must be at least 20 years to apply for the fellowship.

ICAR IACE JRF/SRF Educational Qualification

Indian nationals who have completed a Master's degree program with an overall grade point average (OGPA) of at least 3.0 from a publicly funded/government institution would be eligible. In other circumstances, where simply marks are given instead of grade points, the candidate must have received a minimum percent score as specified in the table below:

• Candidates applying for ICAR Junior Research Fellowship (JRF) must have completed their post-graduation from an institute under ICAR AU. 
• Candidates who have not completed their education at a college not affiliated with ICAR are not eligible to give ICAR JRF. 
• The candidate must complete the postgraduate degree in all areas and meet all degree completion requirements at the time of counseling/admission to the university; otherwise, they will not be considered for admission or the award of the fellowship.

Candidates who clear the ICAR JRF Exam will have to appear for the counseling process. In the counseling process, the seats will be allotted on a merit basis as per the marks obtained by the candidates. Counseling includes various steps which are listed below:

• Registration for ICAR JRF counseling
• Reporting for counseling and document verification
• Choices for college to take admission 
• Seat allotment 
• Confirmation by the candidates through submitting a token amount.

Candidates need to submit the following documents during the counseling process

• ICAR JRF Admit Card
• ICAR JRF Score Card
• Marksheet from class 10th to post-graduation
• Transfer and Migration certificate from the university from which candidate have completed their latest educational qualification.

ICAR Junior Research Fellowship entrance examination is a Computer-based test consisting of 150 objective types, which the candidates must attempt in 150 minutes. For every correct answer, candidates will be awarded 4 marks, with a negative marking of 1 mark. There will be 3 sections in the paper which are sections A, B, and C. ICAR JRF 2023 exam pattern is listed below:

Candidates preparing for the Junior Research Fellowship program should know the ICAR syllabus for the JRF exam. NTA will ask questions about the topics given below. You can also download the ICAR JRF syllabus from the direct link mentioned below.

After successfully completing the ICAR JRF application process, candidates can download the admit card from the official website of ICAR. Candidates need to follow the given instruction to download the ICAR JRF 2023 admit card:

• Visit the official website of NTA ICAR.
• If admit card has been released, a link to download it will be available under the notification section.
• Click on the link and enter your application number and password.
• Admit card will appear on the screen in PDF format. 
• Download the ICAR JRF Admit Card and take a printout of it.

ICAR JRF Exam Day Guidelines

After ICAR JRF admit card 2023, candidates must wait for the examination. Candidates need to read the instructions mentioned on the admit card. The candidates should reach the exam center 1 hour before the commencement of the exam. Candidates need to take the given documents on the examination day:

• ICAR JRF Admit card
• A government-issued Identity card like an Aadhar card or PAN card, or Voter ID
• One passport-size photograph. 

After the commencement of the exam, the first thing the candidates are looking for is the answer key through which they can calculate their score and assume their chances of qualifying for the paper. NTA will release the official ICAR JRF 2023 answer key online. Follow the given steps to download the answer key:

• Visit the official website of NTA ICAR.
• There will be a notification mentioning that the answer key has been released with the link to download. 
• The answer key will be released as a candidate response or a simple pdf file.
• For candidate response, they have to log in with their application number and password, and the answer key will be available along with the answer marked by the candidate.
• For pdf, there will be a direct link. Click on the link and download the answer key in pdf format.

The result for ICAR Junior Research Fellowship will be released within one month after the commencement of the examination. The ICAR JRF result will be declared in the form of the scorecard for which the candidates have to download by following the given steps:

• Visit the official website of NTA ICAR
• If the ICAR JRF result has been declared, then there will be a notification related to it with the link to download the scorecard
• Click on the link and provide your application number and password.
• Download the scorecard and take a printout.