DPS R.K. Puram’s annual school fee is about ₹2,62,000, excluding transport. The school publishes that figure itself, on its admission pages for the 2026-27 session. Of it, the school collects ₹1,00,000 online once it selects a child, and adjusts that amount against the total. Families pay the balance in instalments.
Two things a parent should know before reading further, because parents commonly get both wrong.
The R.K. Puram campus starts at Class VI. There is no nursery admission here. If you are looking for a place for a 3-year-old, you want DPS Vasant Vihar or DPS East of Kailash, the DPS Society’s junior wings, which feed into this campus.
The fee tables on school-listing sites are wrong. Several widely circulated tables put the annual cost at roughly ₹1.6 lakh. None of them carries a date or a source. The school’s own figure is about 40% higher. Budget from the school’s number.
| What it costs, per year | Amount |
|---|---|
| Day scholar, Classes 9 and 11 | about ₹2,62,000 (excludes transport) |
| Payable on selection | ₹1,00,000, adjusted against the above |
| Hostel, in addition | ₹4,82,830 |
| IB Diploma Programme | about ₹6,50,000, plus a one-time ₹1,00,000 |
Over the seven years from Class VI to Class XII, the day-scholar fee alone is a commitment well past ₹18 lakh at today’s rates, before transport, books, uniform or any fee revision. How far a one-lakh monthly income stretches in South Delhi is the household arithmetic that sits underneath that number.
Who can apply, and when
DPS R.K. Puram runs Classes VI to XII on a single senior campus at Kaifi Azmi Marg, Sector 12, a little under 2 kilometres south of Vasant Vihar. The R.K. Puram station on the Magenta Line serves it. The school dates from 1972, the DPS Society runs it, and it holds CBSE affiliation as well as IB World School status. The main campus covers about 12 acres, with a separate 6-acre sports campus.
For the 2026-27 session the school advertised external admission at three points:
| Entry point | Route |
|---|---|
| Class 9 | Entrance test |
| Class 11 | Entrance test, plus stream-specific eligibility |
| IB Diploma (DP1) | Entrance test plus interview, on a separate summer calendar |
Where Class VI fits. Class VI is this campus’s own starting grade, and children moving up from the DPS Society’s junior wings at Vasant Vihar and East of Kailash fill most of it. For the 2026-27 session the school advertised no external Class VI round. It listed external entries at Class 9, Class 11 and the IBDP only.
If your child is in Class 5 now, the practical route into this campus is therefore a junior-wing place rather than an application here. If they are already in Class 5 elsewhere, the next realistic entry point is Class 9, which means planning for a registration window opening around November of their Class 8 year.
The calendar
These are the 2026-27 dates as published, the cycle that has now closed. They are the best available guide to the shape of the next one, which on this pattern would open around November 2026.
| Class 9 | Class 11 | IBDP | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Registration opens | Nov. 1, 2025 | Nov. 1, 2025 | July 3, 2026 |
| Registration closes | Jan. 9, 2026 | Jan. 9, 2026 | July 25, 2026 |
| Registration fee | ₹25 | ₹25 | ₹1,000 |
| Entrance test | Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026 | Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026 | July 27, 2026 |
| Interview stage | None | None | July 28, 2026 |
Registration is online only, through the school’s own website. Note the 10-week window: it opens at the start of November and closes in the first week of January, with the test on the following Sunday. A family that starts looking in February has missed the cycle by a year.
R.K. Puram sits in the South West Delhi district rather than the South Delhi district, despite how everyone describes it. That distinction matters only for paperwork, but it does matter there. The colonies that make up South West Delhi sets out where the administrative line actually runs, and the Magenta Line’s stops in order shows how far the school’s own metro corridor reaches.
The entrance test, in detail
The school held both CBSE-stream tests on the same Sunday morning. They are multiple-choice, and the Class 9 paper carries negative marking. That changes how a child should approach it.
Class 9: 360 marks, three hours
| Component | Marks | Based on |
|---|---|---|
| English | 80 | Not specified |
| Mathematics | 80 | Class VIII NCERT |
| Science | 80 | Class VIII NCERT |
| Social Science | 80 | Class VIII NCERT |
| Mental Ability | 40 | Not specified |
| Total | 360 | 9 a.m. to noon |
Marking: +4 for a correct answer, −1 for a wrong one, 0 for an unattempted question.
That negative marking is the detail most worth absorbing. A wrong answer costs a mark; leaving a question blank costs nothing. On a 360-mark paper, a child who guesses freely across 40 uncertain questions can lose more than they gain. The syllabus is standard Class VIII NCERT across the three academic subjects, so preparation is a matter of consolidation rather than new material.
Class 11: 340 marks, two hours 40 minutes
Multiple choice, based on the CBSE Class 10 curriculum, running 9 to 11:40 a.m. The school selects on merit position in this test.
IBDP: 240 marks, 90 minutes
English, Mathematics and Mental Ability, on the Class 10 syllabus. An interview or group discussion follows for those the school shortlists.
Eligibility, and the conditions that catch people out
Class 9
- Successful completion of Class 8
- Minimum age 13
- Resident of Delhi-NCR only
The residency requirement rules out applicants from further afield for the day-scholar route. Boarding runs on different terms, and the section below covers it.
Class 11
Two criteria apply, and an applicant must meet both.
Criteria I, aggregate. Applicants need 75% or above across five subjects. Only English, Mathematics, Science, Social Science and the second language count.
Criteria II, stream-specific:
| Stream | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Science | 75% or above in each of English, Science and Mathematics |
| Commerce | 75% or above in each of English and Mathematics |
| Humanities | Criteria I only |
The condition that undoes admissions
This is the one to flag on the family calendar. A provisional Class 11 admission is cancelled if the final Class 10 board aggregate comes in below 80%.
Applicants sit the entrance test in January, on the strength of pre-board or half-yearly results. The board results arrive months later. A child can clear the test, accept a place, pay the ₹1,00,000, and still lose it if the boards land at 78%. Plan for that possibility rather than being surprised by it.
IBDP
Applicants need 85% or above in aggregate at Class 10, from CBSE, Cambridge IGCSE, IB or a state board.
What the odds look like
The school does not publish seat numbers or an acceptance rate. What it says is that “every year, we have more applicants than the number of seats available”, which is true and not very useful.
The school’s own board results support a more informative estimate. In 2024-25, 502 students sat Class X and 795 sat Class XII. The difference is roughly 290 students, and it has to come from the Class 11 lateral intake.
Two things follow. First, Class 11 is a genuinely large entry point: the intake runs comfortably more than half the size of the cohort already in the school, not a handful of spare desks. Second, that intake spreads across three streams, so the competition a Science applicant faces is not the same as the competition a Humanities applicant faces.
The same method will not estimate Class 9 intake, because the school’s junior wings feed into Class VI and the cohort has already largely formed by Class 8. Treat Class 9 as the tighter of the two CBSE entry points, with the caveat that this is an inference from cohort sizes and not a published figure.
Is it any good? What the evidence actually says
A note on why this section carries no star rating. Search for reviews of any Indian school and you will find scored listings on aggregator sites. None of them says who left the ratings, how many the site verified as parents or when. A 4.2 out of 5 from an unknown sample tells a parent nothing they can act on. What follows instead is evidence you can check on the school’s own site.
Board results, 2024-25, with cohort sizes
Class XII: 795 students appeared
| Measure | Result |
|---|---|
| First division | 793 (99.75%) |
| 90% and above | 351 (44.15%) |
| 75% and above | 710 (89.31%) |
| A1 in all five subjects | 114 (14.34%) |
| School topper | 99%, Humanities |
By stream: Science 418 students with 417 in first division; Commerce 209 with 208; Humanities 168 with all 168.
Class X: 502 students appeared
| Measure | Result |
|---|---|
| Scored 60% and above | 99.80% |
| 90% and above | 234 (46.61%) |
| 80% and above | 418 (83.27%) |
| School aggregate average | 87.53% |
Cohort size matters here, and it is why these numbers mean something. A small school posting a 99% first-division rate has done something different from a school doing it across 795 candidates. Nearly half of a 500-strong Class X cohort clearing 90% is a genuinely strong distribution, not a handful of toppers carrying an average.
Where students go afterwards
The school does not publish aggregate university destinations. There is no table of offers, no breakdown of how many go abroad, no placement summary. That absence matters, because for a senior school it is one of the more meaningful quality signals a parent could ask for, and its absence here fits the school’s general reticence about published data.
What the school does publish is individual achievement. Recent examples from its own highlights include an All India Rank 1 in NEET with a perfect 720 out of 720, an All India Rank 3 in JEE Advanced, an All India Rank 1 in CLAT, a national topper in NEET PG from an earlier batch and a Grand Award at the international ISEF science fair selected from 65,000 entries.
Read these for what they are. Individual ranks at the very top of national entrance examinations tell you the school produces students capable of competing at that level, and that a peer group operating at that intensity exists. They do not tell you what happens to the median student in a 795-strong cohort. Most families should plan around the median outcome rather than the outlier. The board results above are the better guide to that.
What you are also buying
A 12-acre main campus with a separate 6-acre sports campus. Around 9,500 students attend the DPS Society’s three Delhi campuses: R.K. Puram, Vasant Vihar and East of Kailash. This senior wing is one part of that. Membership of the IPSC and NPSC, the associations that also include Doon and Mayo. Alumni including a former Reserve Bank governor.
Listing sites quote a student-teacher ratio of 43:1 for this school. Treat it with suspicion: it divides the roughly 9,500 students across all three campuses by the teacher count for one of them. The school publishes neither a ratio nor an average class size for the R.K. Puram wing alone. The honest answer to “how big are the classes” is therefore that nobody outside the school knows, and it is a fair thing to ask on a campus visit.
The trade-offs, stated plainly
Scale. This is a very large school. For a child who thrives on the range of activities, teams and peer groups that scale makes possible, that is the attraction. For a child who needs to be individually known by their teachers, it is the risk. Neither is a criticism. They are different children.
Competitiveness. A cohort where 44% clear 90% is a demanding peer environment by definition. That lifts some children and flattens others. Parents should be honest with themselves about which theirs is, and the school’s entrance test does not set out to tell them.
Cost. At about ₹2,62,000 a year before transport, this is a significant household commitment over seven years, and more again if a family adds boarding or the IBDP. It also tends to concentrate the intake: fee levels at this tier draw from the belts where Delhi’s wealth is concentrated, and what a prime South Delhi colony costs to live in gives a sense of the household economics most of the peer group is operating with.
What is not knowable from outside. Teaching quality varies by department and by year in every large school, and no published figure captures it. Talk to current parents in the specific stream your child would enter. That is the one piece of research this article cannot do for you.
Boarding
The school is day-cum-boarding, with more than 400 boarders and separate hostels for boys and girls.
Hostel fee: ₹4,82,830 a year, in addition to the school fee. The school collects it in April for the full year. A late payment attracts ₹500 a month, and the school states there are no refunds for a mid-year withdrawal. In cash terms it is a full-year commitment whatever happens after April.
Boarding also changes the eligibility picture. The Delhi-NCR residency requirement applies to the day-scholar route; boarders come “from across the country” in the school’s own description. For a family outside the NCR, boarding is the route in.
For parents sending a child several hundred kilometres from home, medical access is a fair question to ask on a campus visit. The school lists an on-site medical facility, and the major hospitals within reach of the campus cluster in the Safdarjung and Hauz Khas belt a few kilometres away.
The IB Diploma route
DPS R.K. Puram is now an IB World School, and the IBDP runs as a separate two-year programme alongside the CBSE stream. It has its own calendar, its own criteria and its own cost.
| CBSE Class 11 | IB Diploma | |
|---|---|---|
| Registration | November to January | July 3 to 25 |
| Eligibility | 75% aggregate plus stream criteria | 85% aggregate |
| Test | 340 marks, CBSE Class 10 syllabus | 240 marks, plus interview |
| Annual fee | about ₹2,62,000 | about ₹6,50,000 |
| One-time admission fee | None | ₹1,00,000 |
| Registration fee | ₹25 | ₹1,000 |
Six subject groups: English, French or Hindi, a choice from Business, Economics or Psychology, a science, mathematics, and Visual Arts or an elective. Students take three at Higher Level and three at Standard.
The July calendar is the practical point. It runs entirely after the CBSE Class 11 cycle has closed, which means a family can attempt the CBSE route in January and still consider the IBDP in July. It is not an either-or in the same season. The programme begins on July 29, two days after the test.
Cost is the other practical point: at roughly two and a half times the CBSE fee, the IBDP is a different financial proposition, and worth weighing against what an international curriculum is actually for in a particular child’s case.
EWS, scholarships and fee concessions
This is the part of the picture the school is least forthcoming about, so here is what research can and cannot establish.
Delhi’s EWS route applies at entry level, and this campus is not an entry level. Under the reservation scheme it administers, the Directorate of Education reserves 25% of seats in entry-level classes at private unaided schools (pre-school, pre-primary and Class 1) for children from Economically Weaker Sections, the Disadvantaged Group and Children With Special Needs. A computerised lottery through the DoE’s portal allocates them, the Delhi High Court has set the income ceiling at ₹2.5 lakh pending further orders, and qualifying children receive free education.
DPS R.K. Puram starts at Class VI. The entry-level route therefore runs through the DPS Society’s junior wings at Vasant Vihar and East of Kailash, not through this campus. A family seeking an EWS place in this school network should be looking at the nursery and Class 1 rounds there, on the DoE’s calendar rather than the school’s own.
The school nonetheless enrols EWS students. Its own fee-payment page refers to transport charges applying to EWS category students “from Class 6 onwards”, which establishes that the category exists on this campus, consistent with children progressing up from the junior wings.
What the school does not publish, and what this article therefore will not state: any EWS admission process for its Class 9, Class 11 or IBDP rounds; any merit scholarship, sibling concession, staff-ward provision or hardship fund; and any fee-concession policy of any kind. The absence of a published policy is not evidence that none exists. It means a family in this position has to ask the school directly, and the Directorate of Education is the authority on current entitlement rather than any website. If you are checking which administrative pocket an address falls in for a DoE application, the pincode each South Delhi locality falls under is the quickest reference.
What the new Delhi fee law changes
In December 2025 the Delhi government notified the Delhi School Education (Transparency in Fixation and Regulation of Fees) Act, 2025. It applies to private schools in the capital and it gives parents rights they did not previously have.
The caps
| Charge | Maximum |
|---|---|
| Registration fee | ₹25 |
| Admission charge | ₹200 |
| Caution money | ₹500 |
DPS R.K. Puram’s CBSE-stream registration fee is ₹25, matching the cap exactly. Its IBDP registration fee is ₹1,000. This research could not establish whether the Act’s caps extend to IB programmes, so this page reports the two figures as published and draws no conclusion about compliance.
How a fee increase now works
A school wanting to raise fees must submit a proposal by July 31 each year, backed by three years of audited accounts that a chartered accountant registered with the ICAI has certified. Miss the deadline and the previous year’s structure stands.
Each school must constitute a fee regulation committee of five parents chosen by lottery, three teachers and one government observer. Every member must be present for a decision to be valid.
What you can now ask for
Two provisions are worth knowing before you need them.
Financial documents within seven days. Parents are entitled to the school’s financial documents: a hard copy at ₹1 per page or a digital copy free.
The 15% appeal. Parents representing at least 15% of enrolled students can appeal a proposed fee structure to the District Fee Appellate Committee, within 30 days.
The Act also restricts what tuition fees may cover: operational and academic expenses. It explicitly excludes capital expenditure.
This matters at DPS R.K. Puram for a specific reason. The school does not publish a class-wise fee breakup anywhere on its public website. Its fees page carries contact details and links; the ₹2,62,000 figure appears on the admission pages as an approximate total. Under the 2025 Act, a parent no longer has to accept that as the end of the matter.
Where to live for this school run
The school reports at 7:10 a.m., and classes start at 7:20. That early start is unusual and it is unexpectedly good news for the commute: the drop happens before Delhi’s morning peak begins, so a school run behaves much more like an off-peak journey than a rush-hour one. The afternoon return is the harder leg.
This page measured road distances from R.K. Puram Sector 12 on Aug. 25, 2026, with clear-road times:
| Locality | Distance | Clear road |
|---|---|---|
| Vasant Vihar | 1.9 km | 3 min |
| Green Park | 3.8 km | 7 min |
| Hauz Khas | 4.9 km | 7 min |
| South Extension | 5.6 km | 9 min |
| Malviya Nagar | 6.1 km | 9 min |
| Defence Colony | 6.6 km | 11 min |
| Mehrauli | 7.2 km | 10 min |
| Vasant Kunj | 7.5 km | 10 min |
| Saket | 8.6 km | 11 min |
| Chhatarpur | 9.5 km | 11 min |
| Greater Kailash II | 9.6 km | 14 min |
| Greater Kailash I | 10.3 km | 14 min |
The immediate belt is unusually tight. Rentals in Vasant Vihar put you under 2 kilometres from the gate, and Munirka’s rental market is closer still to the campus boundary at a very different price point.
Between the two, what Safdarjung Enclave offers tenants sits in the same five-minute radius, and much of its stock is older builder floors, so what an older builder floor is actually like to rent repays a look before you commit to one.
Slightly further out, Hauz Khas and Green Park are both inside 10 minutes on a clear road, and both offer far more in daily amenity than the immediate campus surroundings.
Hauz Khas as somewhere to actually live is the fuller picture on the larger of the two, and it has the advantage of sitting on two metro lines rather than one.
The 6 to 10 km band (Saket, Malviya Nagar, Vasant Kunj, Greater Kailash) is where a large share of families at this school in fact live, and at 7 a.m. it is a comfortable run. Saket’s layout and its commercial core and what daily life in Greater Kailash looks like cover the two ends of that band.
Vasant Kunj sector by sector is the third option, and the one with the shortest airport run if that matters to you as well as the school run.
Note that the school charges for its own transport separately from the ₹2,62,000, and it does not publish its bus fares. A family relying on school buses therefore cannot cost the year accurately from published information alone.
Narrowing down the shortlist
On public transport, the R.K. Puram station sits on the same Magenta Line that threads through much of the belt above. Munirka, Hauz Khas and Greater Kailash are all on it. For families outside that corridor, which lines actually serve South Delhi’s colonies is the place to start.
If you are still working through options, every locality name in South Delhi is a wider net than the table above, and current rental listings across South Delhi will show what the school-run belt actually costs to rent in.
One practical note for families moving specifically for this school: a 7:20 a.m. start means a child needs somewhere to sleep properly and somewhere to work, which in practice rules out the smallest units. Three-bedroom homes across South Delhi is the narrower filter most families in this position end up applying.
Frequently asked questions
Does DPS R.K. Puram admit at nursery or Class 1?
No. The R.K. Puram campus runs Classes VI to XII. DPS Vasant Vihar and DPS East of Kailash handle nursery and Class 1 admissions in the DPS Society’s Delhi network, and they are the junior wings feeding this campus. A parent looking for an early-years place should apply there.
Is there a management or donation quota?
The school publishes no such route. Its admission pages describe merit selection through the entrance test, document verification and, for the IBDP, an interview. Anyone offering paid access to a seat is not operating through any process the school publishes.
Can a child from outside Delhi NCR apply?
Not for the Class 9 day-scholar route, which states Delhi-NCR residency as an eligibility condition. Boarding is the route for families elsewhere in India. The school describes its 400-plus boarders as coming from across the country, and the hostel fee is ₹4,82,830 a year on top of the school fee.
What happens if my child clears the test but the Class 10 board result comes in below 80%?
The provisional admission is cancelled. The school’s Class 11 admission criteria state this. Because the entrance test is in January and board results follow months later, a family can be holding a confirmed-looking place and a paid instalment when this happens. If your child’s pre-board results are close to the line, plan a second option before results day rather than after.
Sources and method
Fees and admission. Every fee figure, date, eligibility criterion and test specification on this page comes from DPS R.K. Puram’s own website, meaning its Class 9, Class 11 and IBDP admission pages and its online fee payment page, as published for the 2026-27 session. This page takes no figure from a school-listing or aggregator site.
Why aggregator figures are excluded. Fee tables on several listing sites give an annual total roughly 40% below the school’s own. None carries a date or a source. The same sites publish a 43:1 student-teacher ratio derived by dividing the roughly 9,500 students across all three DPS Society campuses by the teacher count for one. That arithmetic does not describe anything. Neither figure appears above as fact.
Board results. From the school’s own published result analyses for the 2024-25 CBSE examinations, which give cohort sizes alongside percentages.
Profile facts. Founding year, campus size, boarder numbers, memberships and alumni come from the school’s history page and encyclopaedic sources. This page uses them for profile only, never for fees.
Regulation. The Delhi School Education (Transparency in Fixation and Regulation of Fees) Act, 2025, notified in December 2025, and press reporting of its provisions.
Commute distances. This page measured them on Aug. 25, 2026 with an OpenStreetMap-based routing engine from a point in R.K. Puram Sector 12, and validated them by the engine returning local road names. Clear-road durations are free-flow estimates, not predictions. Because the school reports at 7:10 a.m., these run closer to realistic for the morning run than they would for a mid-morning journey, and the measured airport run from Greater Kailash explains how much Delhi’s peak hours change a road journey.
Not stated here: seat numbers, acceptance rates, star ratings, school transport fares and a class-wise fee breakup. The school publishes none of them.
A note on dates. The admission dates above are the 2026-27 cycle as published, which has closed. They are the best available indication of the next cycle’s shape, not a guarantee of it. Confirm against the school’s own admission page before you plan around any date.