India: JEE, NEET entrance exams could be merged into CUET

India's national engineering and medical entrance exams could be combined into one examination under a new proposed plan.

According to the Times of India, University Grants Commission chairperson Jagadesh Kumar says the body is working on creating a draft plan to merge the NEET (National Eligibility cum Entrance Test) and JEE (Joint Entrance Test) exams into the Common University Entrance Test-Undergraduate (CUET-UG).

Students currently appear for three examinations for four subjects - mathematics, physics, biology and chemistry. However, under the proposed combined plan, applicants could choose their preferred field of study after appearing for just one exam.

Kumar says that the new CUET-UG plan aims to remove the stress applicants face by taking several exams at once instead of just one.

"The students who would like to go into engineering, their marks can be used as a ranking list, and similarly for medicine. If they don't get into medicine or engineering, under CUET, they will still have the opportunity to join different programmes using the same marks of either mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and so on."

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The UGC also sees the move as one to ease the logistics of conducting wide-scale examinations for the National Testing Agency.

"In some cases, as you have seen in CUET-UG, students are not given their first preference, so they have to travel a slightly longer distance instead of writing in their own city. If you minimise the number of tests, then there is a possibility that, from a logistics point of view for the NTA, it will become much easier. And also for question papers, we have to do separate sets for JEE, NEET and CUET."

• India