CUET to be Held in 3 Shifts; Merger With JEE, NEET

CUET to be held in 3 shifts

According to UGC Chairman M Jagadesh Kumar, the Common University Entrance Exam (CUET) UG will be administered in three shifts rather than two this year, and plans for its merging with important admission tests like JEE and NEET would be made public at least two years in advance. In an interview with PTI, Kumar stated that the National Testing Agency (NTA) and University Grants Commission (UGC) are ready to guarantee that the second edition of CUET-UG is error-free.

“Regarding the experiences that students had the previous year, I do agree that there were a few centres where there were concerns, and this year we are taking care of all the problems associated with the experiences that the kids had. We will make sure that this time, the students must concentrate just on the tests and not on any potential problems or how we are handling any problems. “To ensure that the second edition is error-free, we are doing so by selecting the centres well in advance and assessing the infrastructure that is available, including the computers, bandwidth, and technical staff at the centres, he said.

“I agree that there were a number of faults with the exam last time, but this year there are no problems. We have developed a plan with the student’s past experiences in mind, and we’re prepared to make sure that the applicants just need to worry about the exam and not any hiccups,” he said. The exam’s second iteration, which serves as a standard entry point for undergraduate admissions in national centres of higher learning, is due to take place from May 21 to May 31.

In case there are any hiccups, the applicants can be relocated there and the exam for a certain shift would not be cancelled, according to Kumar, extra computers and other centres have been set up as plan B. He claimed that “the schedule has been established in such a way that the academic calendar can be restored from this year.”

The UGC chief also disclosed that the exam will be held in three shifts starting this year, a departure from the customary schedule. When questioned about the idea to combine the CUET with the JEE for engineering and the NEET for medicine, he responded, “That is definitely achievable. The specifics are still being worked out, but once the merger occurs, notice will be given to the students at least two years in advance.

The burden on students should be lessened, according to NEP 2020, by having a single national-level admission examination. We suggested that pupils be made aware of the likelihood that NEP has advocated such a thing and that it may happen in the upcoming years. Internally, we are figuring out how to move things along. The Health Ministry is among the stakeholders being consulted.

The UGC had declared in March of last year that all central universities would conduct undergraduate admissions using a common entrance test and not based on class 12 grades. The NTA had to cancel the exam at several centres during the first administration of the CUET-UG, which took place in July of last year. Several students were turned away from centres even though some were advised of the cancellation the night before the exam. The exam has been cancelled at some centres, according to the UGC chairman, after reports of “sabotage.” With 14.9 lakh registrations, the CUET, the unified entrance for undergraduate admissions in all central universities, surpassed JEE-average Main’s to become the second-largest entrance exam in the nation.

“About 11.5 lakh registrations have already been made this year. The deadline has been extended to March 30, and we anticipate that the number of applications will surpass that of last year, according to Kumar. inquired about “He claimed that efforts have been made to minimise any errors that may have occurred during the “normalisation” of scores, which disappointed some applicants when they discovered that their marks had been reduced from their original scores and made it difficult for them to get into their dream colleges.

In order to reduce any faults in the normalisation process, the exam timetable was condensed this year to 10 days from over one and a half months, according to the speaker. This was done because the fluctuation is greater when the exam is held over a longer period of time. The normalisation formula employing the “equipercentile approach” has been decided by a panel of experts from Indian Statistical Institute, IT Delhi and Delhi University.

According to Kumar, CUET centres can be divided into three groups. “We divided the centres into categories A, B, and C. We won’t be using some of the category C centres that we used last year because of issues we had with them. “The category B will contain the centres where we must provide support, undertake some preliminary work, and ensure that the necessary infrastructure is there. Category A centres are perfect, “he remarked.