UGC writes to state, private universities to adopt CUET from 2022-23 academic year

The University Grants Commission (UGC) has urged public universities, colleges, and private universities to use the Common University Entrance Test (CUET) to enroll candidates to undergraduate programmes from the 2022-23 academic session onwards.

Rajnish Jain, the UGC secretary, has written to all university and college vice-chancellors, directors, and principals, urging them to adopt CUET, for which the application window will be available from April 2 to April 30. For the time being, CUET has been mandated for the 45 central universities beginning in the upcoming academic year.

Students will not have to take multiple admission tests if all Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), regardless of affiliation, adopt the CUET, Jain stated in the letter. It will also provide students from other boards an equal chance, he noted.

“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,” mentions the UGC letter.

Meanwhile, the National Testing Agency (NTA), which will conduct the CUET, published the broad instructions for the test on its website nta.ac.in on Sunday. The test is expected to take place in the first week of July. The test will be broken into four components based on the NCERT class 12 syllabus. Applicants in Sections I A and I B will be required to take language exams. Each segment will include 50 questions, with the candidate having to answer 40 of them.

Section II will assess a candidate’s knowledge of core courses that they want to study in college. In the Section II paper, which will also be 45 minutes long, a candidate will have to answer 40 out of 50 questions. Section III of the CUET will be a general test for any undergraduate programme or programmes offered by universities that use a General Test for admission rather than accepting students based on their domain subject scores.