Central universities may have been caught unawares when the University Grants Commission, or UGC (which looks into the ‘coordination, determination and maintenance of standards of university education in India’), made it mandatory from this year for them to admit students in their undergraduate programmes solely on the basis and merit of scores in the Central University Entrance Test (CUET). They have little time to lose if they want to salvage their academic session. The National Testing Agency (NTA) of the Ministry of Higher Education, which has the responsibility of conducting the entrance tests for all the Central universities for the academic session 2022-23, has announced the details of the test. Registration began from April 2 and the application window will end on April 30. The test is tentatively scheduled for mid-July.
Few central universities appear ready to guide prospective students about certain essential details that they need while registering for the test. Students must know which language to choose. Since they can appear in a maximum of six out of the 27 domain knowledge subjects, they must know which are the ones which would be required by a university for admission to different courses. Universities with much larger numbers of undergraduate programmes need to take a cautious and careful call in this regard.
