Here's what you need to know about undergrad entrance test CUET

The University Grants Commission (UGC) said on Monday that there will now be a common entrance test for admission to undergraduate courses in the 45 Central Universities (CUs) across the country.

The Common University Entrance Test (CUET), Central University, which will now be mandatory for undergraduate admissions, will be conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA) from this year.

Standard 12 Board exam marks will no longer play a role in the undergraduate admissions into CUs from this year, according to the UGC, and the admissions to the undergraduate courses will be only be held on the basis of CUET.

What was  the idea behind UGC’s move?

It is thought that having a common entrance exam instead of multiple ones will relieve students of the stress of preparing for multiple exams. Rather, they can focus on just one common entrance for all the 45 CUs.

CUET is actually an updated form of the Central Universities Common Entrance Test (CUCET), which has been taking place since 2010. But, as the CUCET was not mandatory for all CUs, only 14 CUs conducted their entrances through CUCET till last year.

But from this academic session, under the new National Education Policy (NEP), CUET has been made compulsory for all 45 CUs.

Will Board exams marks carry no weightage?

No, they wont’ The UGC say it is due to the “diversity” in evaluation methods of different Boards that it decided not to give weightage to the Board exam marks.

Also read: CUET now compulsory for admission to undergrad courses in Central varsities

What will be the format of the test?

Quoting UGC chairman M Jagadesh Kumar, reports  said the test will be of three hours and 30 minutes and will have multiple choice questions. The computer-based test will include three parts, including the language test, 27 domain specific tests and a general aptitude test.

The first part will test the candidate on a language of their choice, out of the 13 languages that the UGC offers. Apart from English and Hindi, the candidate can take the test in Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telegu and Urdu.

Will there be any change in the PG admission process for CUs?

The UGC said the CUET is mandatory only for UG admissions now and the CUs are free to stick to their old entrance process for PGs for now.