Delhi University is planning to introduce entrance exam-based admissions for all its undergraduate courses while also giving fixed weightage to Class XII scores. From the upcoming academic year i.e. 2019-2020, Class XII marks may not be enough to get a seat in a Delhi University college. The full details about the entrance-based system are still awaited and will be out soon into public. University is planning to introduce it from the 2019 admission season.

“The admission committee is going to take up the matter of entrance exams with regard to the admission process of 2019-20. The committee is an independent panel that has education experts, college principals and faculty as members,” said by DU’s vice-chancellor Yogesh Tyagi.

The DU admission committee had discussed the same issue last year as well but they are failed to accept the agreements and disagree with the proposal. While problems relating to holding of entrance exams were one of the reasons for postponing the plan, it had also met with resistance from faculty members in the admission committee.

The online entrance exam can be outsourced to the new testing agency formed by MHRD named as National Testing Agency (NTA), which has recently taken up the responsibility of holding national exams like NET and JEE from CBSE. Asked if the university would consider a role for the NTA, Tyagi said the admission committee would consider that possibility.

Advantages of this Entrance Test

1. The entrance test will limit the unrealistic cutoff trends and disparities in class 12^th marks between students from different education boards.
2. More students will get opportunity to get a seat due to the eligibility criteria becoming low.
3. Duration of admission process will be short through centralized counselling.

DU currently conducts computer-based entrance tests for nine undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, while admissions to a majority of undergraduate courses are determined through the aspirant’s scores in his/her best four subjects in the Class XII exams for the arts and commerce streams, and best three subjects for the sciences.

In 2017, DU had tentatively reached out to students, especially those in Class XII, for feedback on the proposed switch to an entrance-based admission policy.

Source: with the inputs of Times of India