With just one day left for Common University Entrance Test (CUET), scheduled to begin from tomorrow in phases, here is a quick guide for those who aspire to appear for the test. CUET is the gateway exam for admissions to undergraduate programmers at many of the central universities.

What is CUET?

From the current academic year onwards, the UGC has decided to hold a mandatory CUET for undergraduate admission to 45 of the 54 centrally funded universities which mean that Class XII board results will be superseded for determining university admission in favour of an all-India exam.

The test will be conducted once this year but as per National Testing Agency (NTA), it will consider conducting the exam twice in the near future.

The decision to conduct CUET exam aims to provide equal opportunity to all students from different boards and help students from appearing in multiple entrance examinations, conducted on different dates.

The CUET is going to be held in 500 cities in India, and 10 cities outside the country. Nearly 14, 90,000 candidates are going to be appearing in the test. In phase one, nearly 8,10,000 students are participating while in phase two, about 6,80,000 students would be appearing.

Process:-

According to NTA, the CUET will be conducted in Computer Based Test (CBT) Mode with multiple choice questions where all questions in various testing areas will be benchmarked at the level of Class XII.

The questions in the test will be based on the NCERT syllabus which is largely followed in CBSE schools, while 90% of students study in State Boards.

As per experts, it may promote a CUET-centric coaching culture causing students to focus on the entrance rather than Class 12th exams.

Schedule:-

CUET will be conducted in phases and is scheduled to take place on July 15, July 16, 19, 20, August 4, August 5, 6, August 7, August 8, and August 10. NTA will also hold CUET for postgraduate admissions, but the date sheet is yet to be released.

As per NTA, admit cards for CUET-UG 2022 can be downloaded from cuet.samarth.ac.in. Candidates will be able to login through their registered credentials and download their admit cards and they will be informed on their registered mobile numbers as soon as they admit cards are available. While the admit cards for Phase 1 has already been issued, the admit cards for candidates appearing in phase two will be issued on July 31.

Besides, NTA will also mail the admit card to the email address that the candidate mentioned officially at the time of registration for CUET-UG.

Pattern:

As per the NTA, the candidates will not be able to change their exam date or centre that is allocated to them. However, NTA will consider the request in case of difficult circumstances where a candidate can request a change in her examination centre by writing to the official email address.

The test will be held in two shifts, morning and evening over several days in which the morning shift will be held from 9 am to 12.15 pm, and the evening shift is scheduled from 3 pm to 6.45 pm.  The syllabus of CUET UG 2022 will be based on Class 12 syllabus and all questions in various testing areas will be benchmarked at the level of Class XII only.

As far as marking is concerned, there will be negative marking for incorrect answers. Every incorrect answer will result in deduction of one mark, but no points are deducted for leaving a question unanswered.