The University Grants Commission (UGC) has made an appeal to all state and private universities in the country to adopt the newly formulated Central University Entrance Test (CUET) for admissions toward undergraduate studies from the upcoming academic year.
Rajnish Jain, UGC Secretary, wrote to the vice-chancellors, directors and principals of all universities and colleges to adopt CUET. The application window for the exam will be open from April 2 to April 30. As of now, CUET only applies to 45 central universities in the country.
Jain wrote in the letter that if all Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), irrespective of affiliation, adopt the CUET, students will not have to take multiple entrance exams. It will also provide equal opportunity to students from different boards, he added.
The UGC letter states, "Many state universities, deemed to be universities, private universities, and other Higher Education Institutions in the country also use either marks of 12th board or conduct entrance test for admission in UG programmes. To save students from appearing in multiple entrance examinations, conducted in different dates, sometimes coinciding with each other, and to also provide equal opportunity to all students from different boards, UGC invites and encourages all state universities, deemed to be universities, private universities and other HEIs to adopt and use CUET score from 2022-23 onwards for admissions of students in their UG programs."
The NTA, which will conduct the CUET nationally, has announced the schematics for the exam. The test will be based on the NCERT Class XII syllabus. There will be four sections, out of which, the first two will be papers on languages. Each of the sections will contain 50 questions, out of which, 40 would have to be attempted by the student.
The third section will evaluate the student's command over the core subject they wish to study at the college level. The section, like the first two, will be 45-minutes long and 40 out of 50 questions will need to be attempted. The last section of the test will be a general test.
