Are seats reserved for women in IOE engineering admissions?
Yes. Ten per cent of the positions in both the Regular and the Full Fee programmes are reserved for women applicants, which across the five constituent campuses is 56 Regular and 145 Full Fee seats. It is a floor applied after the general merit list rather than a separate competition.
IOE reserves ten per cent of the positions in both the Regular and the Full Fee programmes for women applicants, and that reservation works inside the published admission targets rather than adding seats on top of them. Across the five constituent campuses it comes to 56 Regular and 145 Full Fee places, published campus by campus and programme by programme. The mechanism is a floor rather than a separate competition. If the published admission list has not already selected ten per cent women on general merit, then women who meet the minimum eligibility are added to that list in merit order until the ten per cent is made up. You still sit the same entrance examination and you still appear on the same central merit list, so the reservation decides where you are allocated rather than whether you qualify. It is a different provision from the twenty per cent inclusive quota, which sits only on the Regular side.
How is the ten per cent actually applied?
After the general list, not before it. The booklet describes the sequence in one sentence: where ten per cent women applicants have not been selected in the published admission list, women applicants who meet the minimum eligibility are published in the admission list on merit basis to make the ten per cent up. So it never displaces a woman who already qualified on open merit, and it never lowers the entrance requirement.
What should you ask the campus, and when?
Ask how the reserved quota will be applied against your own rank, and ask before the priority amendment window closes rather than after a list is published. Reservation is applied at the point of allocation, so the useful conversation happens while your priority order can still be changed. After a list appears, the only route left is the three-hour complaint window on the day.
What if you qualify under more than one quota?
You are placed in exactly one, and the booklet chooses which rather than leaving it to you. Taking the quota categories in the order the booklet prints them, the one appearing later in that order takes first priority, the ones before it follow in descending order, and open is placed last of all. The booklet works its own example: an applicant who applies under women and Janajati as well as open is placed in the Janajati quota automatically. Applying under several categories does not multiply your chances.
The ten per cent is counted per programme, not nationally
This is the part that changes how the reservation should be read. The 56 and the 145 are totals arrived at by adding up a grid; they are not a pool anyone competes in. The booklet publishes the women’s quota as a seat count for each programme at each campus separately, so the number that applies to you is the one in a single cell of that grid, and it is usually small. Civil at Pulchowk carries the largest Regular allocation in the system at 11 places; most other programmes carry one Regular seat and four Full Fee. A quota seat left unused in Mechanical at one campus does nothing for a candidate waiting on Computer at another, because the two were never the same allocation.
Does this quota have a document deadline?
It does, and it is the same one every reserved route runs to. The preamble to section 6 covers each of the quotas from 6.1 to 6.5, and the women’s quota is 6.1. Anything a campus asks for under it has to reach the place IOE designates within five days of the date the entrance result is published, after which the booklet says no action is taken on late documents.
What reservation does not change
You still have to pass the IOE entrance examination and you are still placed on the central merit list. A reserved category affects allocation, not eligibility, and it is not a second admission route that runs alongside the merit list.
Section 6.1 of the BE/B.Arch Booklet 2083, page 13, with the multiple-quota rule from the notes printed under the reservation tables on page 15. Read from rendered page images rather than extracted text, because the booklet sets its Nepali in a legacy font that does not survive copying. The booklet notes that its provisions may be amended by the authority, so confirm the current position with the campus.
Sources
- IOE B.E./B.Arch Booklet 2083published 7 August 2026 · read 18 August 2026
Last reviewed by Ram Raj Thapa, Admissions Officer, Imperial College of Engineering. Every figure on this page is cited to the document it came from.
