Prior academic scores will see you 50% through….Charu Sudan Kasturi
Good under-graduate scores may soon eliminate half the pressure of securing post-graduate admission at any of India’s central universities. Students will receive 50% weightage for previous academic performance in common admissions to all central universities under a blueprint finalised by a panel of experts appointed by HRD minister Kapil Sibal. Performance in a common entrance test will receive the remaining 50% weightage.
The panel of vice-chancellors headed by former Jawaharlal Nehru University V-C BB Bhattacharya has submitted its final report to Sibal, and the blueprint is set to be discussed with V-Cs of about 200 central and state varsities on March 25-26, government source said.
Sibal plans to start common admissions for MPhil and PhD programmes at the country’s 40 central universities from the coming 2011 academic session.
The common admission test will be extended for masters’ programmes in 2012 and to undergraduate programmes in 2013 under the plan. Central universities currently mostly rely solely on admission tests for picking students for masters, MPhil and PhD programmes – instead of giving specific weightage to students’ scores in the previous programme.
University Grants Commission sources said an estimated 100 lakh students are currently pursuing under-graduate education across the over 500 central, state and deemed universities.
Close to 10 lakh of these are studying at central universities. About a lakh are pursuing masters’ programmes at central universities, while between 5-10,000 are enrolled in MPhil and PhD programmes, sources said.
The Bhattacharya panel was earlier mulling 30% admission weightage for scores in the preceding degree programme – under-graduate scores for masters’ admissions, masters’ scores for MPhil and MPhil scores for PhD programmes. But the weightage has been hiked in the panel’s final report, which also specifies that only scores in the first two years of the preceding academic degree course will be considered.
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