Offline CUET-UG likely for 12 subjects that get over 100k registrations
The exam, which is conducted by the National Testing Agency, will be administered in hybrid mode for the first time between May 15 and 31
The Common University Entrance Test for Undergraduate Admissions (CUET-UG) is likely to be conducted in offline mode in at least 12 subjects that have more than 100,000 registrations, a top official said on Saturday. The number of subjects, which currently include English, physics, chemistry and general test, could change based on the number of applicants.
The exam, which is conducted by the National Testing Agency, will be administered in hybrid mode for the first time between May 15 and 31.
The testing body in February announced that for subjects with a high number of applicants or more than one hundred thousand registrations, the exam will be conducted in pen and paper mode using the optical mark recognition (OMR) format. For other subjects, it will continue to be computer-based.
More than 1.35 million candidates have registered for the CUET-UG this year, official data showed.
Of them, 717,000 are male, and 630,000 are female, and seven have registered as the third gender. Each candidate can register for up to six subjects. As many as 261 universities are participating in the test this year.
English has seen the highest registration with over a ,million candidates, followed by general test (830,000), chemistry (700,000), physics (680,000), mathematics (490,000), biology (390,000), economics (214,000), Hindi (200,000), business studies (190,000), accountancy (180,000), political science (161,000) and history (137,000).
UGC chairperson M Jagadesh Kumar, who is overseeing the conduct of the examination, said the data is being analysed. “But generally, papers with large registrations such as general test, English, Hindi, physics, chemistry, maths, biology, economics and such similar papers are expected to be in OMR mode,” Kumar said.
“But the final list of papers, which will be conducted in OMR mode, will be announced by NTA at an appropriate time.”
This year the testing agency will use schools, colleges and other educational institutions as exam centres, Kumar said, unlike earlier when only centres equipped with a large number of computers were used. “It will help NTA to allot centres to students near their houses,” he said.
Of the 1.35 million students registered this year, 5.5 million are from the general category, 482,000 from other backward classes, 144,000 from scheduled castes, 88,083 from scheduled tribes and 88,311 from economically weaker sections of society, according to official data.