Admission in all central universities including North Eastern Hill University (NEHU) for the year 2022-2023 will be held through Common Entrance Test (CET), which will be conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA).
According to sources, the Ministry of Education has sent guidelines and communication to 45 central universities for admissions via CET for undergraduate and postgraduate courses from the academic session 2022-2023.
A notification to this effect has been issued by the University Grants Commission (UGC) recently. NEHU is the only central university in Meghalaya.
“Accordingly, all central universities are advised to take appropriate measures for the Common Entrance Test from the academic session 2022-2023. These tests would be conducted in a minimum 13 languages in which NTA is already conducting JEE and NEET examinations,” the UGC said in a letter to vice-chancellors of all universities.
“The Common Entrance Test may also be adopted by the willing state/private universities/deemed to be universities,” the commission said.
The UGC has also said that for admission in PhD programme, NET score shall be used, wherever feasible.
CET will have two components – an aptitude test and a subject-specific test. The aptitude test will consist of questions on reading comprehension, verbal ability, logical and analytical reasoning, and general awareness. The second component will be subject-specific.
The National Education Policy (NEP), 2020, had proposed a Common Entrance Test for all universities through the NTA which will serve as a premier, expert, autonomous testing organisation to offer high-quality common aptitude test, as well as specialised common subject exams in the sciences, humanities, languages, arts, and vocational subjects in higher education institutions.
A committee was constituted to look into the matter and to suggest the modalities for conducting the test for central universities.
“The committee held several rounds of discussions regarding the modalities in details for conducting the CET. Thereafter, a meeting was held with the vice-chancellors of all central universities on November 21 to discuss the recommendations of the panel,” UGC said.
Under the present system, most of the universities prepare the merit list on the basis of marks scored in Class 12. The students have to fill admission forms for different universities on different dates. When the students do not get admission in their desired colleges, they turn to colleges where seats are vacant.