New Delhi: The National Testing Agency has extended the Common University Entrance Test for Undergraduate admissions, or CUET-UG, to as many as 24 countries, with centres in cities that include Washington DC, Sydney, Vienna, Cape Town and Ottawa, among others, officials said on Tuesday.
The application process for the second edition of the CUET-UG exam is open; the last date of submission is March 12. The test will be conducted from May 21.
The testing agency had given a choice of 13 overseas cities, mostly in the Middle East and South Asia, for centres during the maiden edition last year. These included Bahrain, Colombo, Doha, Dubai, Kathmandu, Kuwait, Muscat, Riyadh, Sharjah and Singapore, among others.
This time, the NTA has expanded further and provided a choice of centres in more countries, including the United States, Australia, Austria, Singapore, South Africa, Russia, Canada, Russia, Vietnam, Nigeria, Hong Kong and Brazil, among others.
The agency decided to expand as many countries have a considerable presence of the Indian diaspora, according to M Jagadesh Kumar, chairman of the University Grants Commission.
“The NTA has identified such cities across the globe and decided to provide these options for such a crucial entrance exam this year. We have also received unofficial requests from the Indian diaspora through Indian embassies in some of these countries,” he said. “We want to give equal opportunity to all students who want to study in Indian central universities.”
“The centres will be set up in these cities provided there are sufficient number of candidates opting for them,” Kumar said. “We will coordinate with Indian embassies once the registration process is over.”
The Centre had made CUET-UG a mandatory yardstick for all central universities while keeping it optional for others. As many as 1,490,000 candidates had applied for at least five universities and over 54,000 subject combinations for the exam last year. The debut edition of the exam saw 60% attendance, and was marred by technical glitches.
Kumar said that the NTA will also be increasing the number of centres within the country. “The centres will be given enough time for uploading and downloading the question papers to avoid any technical issue, and conduct the exam smoothly,” he said.
According to the NTA’s CUET-UG information bulletin, efforts will be made to allot the city of examination to the candidates in the order of preference opted by them in their application form. “However, due to administrative/logistic reasons, a different city can be allotted. Choice of centre cities will be limited to the state of permanent address or state of present address only,” it said.
Meanwhile, the NTA has increased the number of subjects students can opt for to 10 from nine this year. Like last year, the exam will be conducted on multiple days in three shifts, depending on the number of candidates and subject choices.
