How many marks do you need to pass a VTU subject? Three gates, not one

Most students carry one number around: 40 out of 100. That is the total you need, and it is genuinely part of it — but it is not the whole condition, and believing it is the whole condition is how people end up surprised by a fail they had already counted as a pass. VTU applies three separate minimums to a subject, and you have to clear all three.

The three gates

1. minimum in the CIE  (internal assessment)
2. minimum in the SEE  (end-semester examination)
3. aggregate of CIE + SEE ≥ 40 out of 100

They are gates, not a running total. Falling short on any one of them fails the subject even when your combined marks clear 40 comfortably. This is the single most useful thing to understand about passing, because it is the case the one-number version of the rule cannot describe.

The numbers, by scheme

The percentages are unchanged across the schemes: 40% of the internal maximum, 35% of the end-semester maximum. What changed is the split they are applied to.

Clearing 40 and still failing

Under the 2022 and 2025 schemes, suppose your internal is 28 out of 50 and you score 14 out of 50 in the end-semester exam.

28 + 14 = 42   ≥ 40, so the aggregate gate is cleared
14             < 18, so the SEE gate is not

That subject is a fail. The total says pass, and the total is not what decides.

It cuts the other way too. An internal of 18 with 30 in the end-semester exam gives 48 out of 100, and it is also a fail — the internal minimum is 20, and 18 does not reach it. Both of these are ordinary results, not edge cases. The lesson is that a strong performance in one component cannot cover a weak one in the other.

The 2018 scheme is the odd one out

If you are on 2018, your arithmetic is different and most of what you read online will be wrong for you. The split there is 40 internal and 60 end-semester, so the internal minimum is 16 out of 40 and the end-semester minimum is 21 out of 60. The 2022 and 2025 figures of 20 and 18 do not apply to you at all.

This cuts both ways. Students on the older scheme read the current numbers, and students on the current scheme read the older ones, and each concludes the other is lying. Both sets of figures are correct — for their own scheme.

Integrated courses and labs are not this calculation

Two course types run their own version of it, and they are where the tidy three-gate picture gets messier.

An integrated theory-and-practical course splits its internal fifty into 25 for the theory part and 25 for the laboratory part, and you need a minimum of 10 out of 25 in each half. Scoring 20 overall by taking 22 from theory and nothing from the lab is not a pass — the two halves are gated separately.

Straight laboratory, project and internship courses are assessed differently again, with their own internal and end-semester minimums rather than the theory split above.

If you pass the internal and fail the exam

The internal marks you earned at your first attempt are carried forward when you reappear for the end-semester exam. You are re-sitting the exam, not the whole subject, and you do not lose the CIE you already banked.

The exception is a DX grade — the one given for falling short on attendance. There the position is different, because the internal assessment you were credited with was not earned in the ordinary way, and the internal is revised rather than carried forward. If you are carrying a DX, treat the carried-forward-internal rule as not applying to you.

What this page cannot tell you

Two things, and both matter.

First, there is no fixed number of attempts in the B.E./B.Tech regulations. The often-quoted "four attempts and you are done" rule belongs to other programmes, not to this one, and you should not plan around it. If you need to know your position after several attempts, ask your department rather than a forum.

Second, the university fixes the internal total and the minimum — it does not fix how your department conducts the internals. How many tests, what they are out of, and how they are weighted inside that total is decided locally. So "20 out of 50" is a university rule; "three tests of 25 marks" or "two of 30" is not.

Working out where you stand

Every one of these gates depends on knowing your internal mark exactly, and the internal mark is the part students estimate.

One VTU records your IA-1, IA-2 and IA-3 scores per subject and shows the internal mark VTU will actually count, the best two of the three with the weakest visibly dropped. Free on Android.