Entrance tests weigh down students

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Come Sunday and Plus Two students will embark on a two month period of keeping appointments with over three dozen entrance tests for professional courses.

Students who would otherwise spend their summer vacation holidaying are therefore neck- deep in textbooks and making a beeline for coaching centres to get that additional edge that will help them sail through the tests.

Most are disappointed that the Medical Council of India (MCI), which had till last December held out hope that only one exam would be conducted for all medical/dental admissions across the country, now plans to introduce the common medical entrance test — National Eligibility cum Entrance Examination (NEET) — only in 2013.

They have no option now but to study hard for the April 1 preliminary of the all important All-India Pre-Medical Test (AIPMT-2012) for admission to 15 per cent of MBBS/BDS seats in
government medical colleges.

Those who get through will take their chances at the final exam on May 13.

“I was relieved that I would have to write only one exam to join a medical course when the MCI promised to introduce it instead of the many tests that we have today. Since NEET was scheduled for May 15, I thought I would get nearly one and a half months to prepare for it, but with the AIPMT coming so close on the heels of the CBSE exam which concluded on March 24, I have hardly any time left, ” laments Gopika Jayakrishnan, a Plus Two student from Kochi.

But some like Aswin Krishnamoorthy from Bhavan’s Elamakkara seem unfazed. Pointing out that the syllabus remains the same for both exams, he says that students who miss one entrance test will get the opportunity to write another. “So it is not all bad,” he maintains.