The University Grants Commission on Monday directed that admissions to undergraduate and postgraduate courses offered in Central Universities should be strictly done on the basis of the Common University Entrance Test (CUET). The new decision does away with the criteria for considering Class 12 marks for UG admissions from the session 2022-23.
The Common University Entrance Test or the CUET will be conducted in the first week of July by the National Test Agency (NTA). UGC Chairperson M Jagadesh Kumar while announcing the exam said that the computer-based exam will be conducted in 13 regional languages including English, Hindi, Gujarati, Assamese, Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu. The test will be mandatory for seeking admission into 45 central universities in the country.
Talking to the Press, M Jagadesh Kumar said, “Admissions to all undergraduate programmes in all the centrally funded universities and their affiliated colleges will be done solely on the basis of the CUET score from the 2022-23 session. For postgraduate programmes, many universities are also willing to use the CUET score. We hope that all central universities will ultimately use CUET for their postgraduate admissions also.” The Delhi University earlier had already announced that admissions for the 2022-23 session will be solely based on CUET scores.
The Universities have been given the liberty to set up their individual minimum eligibility criteria in terms of class 12 marks for undergraduate admissions. The decision does not affect the individual admission criteria of some universities including their reservation policies. “For instance, if any university reserves a certain percentage for local students or internal students, it will continue to do that. The only difference is that these students will also have to come through CUET like students to be admitted to general seats. The reservation policies and ordinances of the universities will remain unchanged,” the UGC chairperson said.
Universities with minority grants such as the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), the Jamia Millia Islamia and St Stephan’s College are allowed to continue to reserve 50% of the seats for students belonging to the respective minority communities. The CUET does not entail the admissions of international students while they will be admitted on a supernumerary basis to Indian Universities, added M Jagadesh Kumar. The Universities are also allowed to reserve a certain weightage for practical exams alongside CUET scores for admissions into courses like music, painting, sculpture and theatre.
How will CUET be conducted?
M Jagadesh Kumar detailed that the three-and-a-half hour-long exam will be conducted in two phases based on the Class 12 NCERT syllabus. CUET will be a computer-based exam with multiple-choice questions. “Candidates can decide the number of domain subjects they want to attempt during the exam. They can appear for up to six domain subjects out of the basket of 27 subjects such as accountancy, biology, business studies, chemistry, geography history, economics, mathematics, among others,” he added.
Guidelines for the conduction of the CUET will be released soon by the University Grants Commission.
