The South Asian University will conduct the entrance examination online this year on April 27-28. The examination will be conducted to provide admission to masters and Ph.D. programmes. It has also been reported that the earlier, the question paper consisted of descriptive questions, but it has been changed to multiple-choice questions format for all questions.
SAU officials said “Being an international university that admits students from all SAARC countries, the university has to hold entrance tests in several countries. By shifting to an online mode, the university will save around Rs 30 lakh,” an official told.
So far, our students used to register and pay the fee online, but we had a pen and paper mode of examinations. This time, they will be required to go to a computer center and take the entrance test online. Earlier there were also longer, essay-type answers, but now all exams will be in MCQ format. For Ph.D. level, students will also need to submit a research proposal and sit for an interview,” Dean Academics Promodini Varma told.
She added that ‘language ability and analytical skills’ can be determined to check the ability to attempt social science subject questions like International Relations and Sociology.
“The university has tied up with Ginger Web Technologies, chosen through a tender. The assessment will be done by the university — that has not been outsourced. They will look after registration, fee collection and conducting the examination. This includes security, monitoring of computers, etc. They will have live-feeds through which we will be able to see, sitting here, what is happening in every center, which was not possible earlier,” she said.
Vice-President Santosh Panda informed that the test will be conducted for two years instead of three years, which used to happen earlier. “While Sociology and IR will not have negative marking, other subjects will have 1/4th negative marking for every wrong answer,” he said.
The decision for conducting the online examination was decided by the Central Examination Committee, which included Deans of all departments, the decision was taken last year.
“The numbers have become too large. Last time, there were 1,000 students in Afghanistan. Secondly, we don’t understand their language. So even if we send a supervisor from here, they don’t understand what’s happening. The cost will reduce by around Rs 30 lakh. Just getting the question papers printed would cost us Rs 3-4 lakh. We also had to think of the security of question papers and answer sheets, which are transported to other countries,” added Varma.
“We have around 30 applications for every seat. This year, we are expecting that the applications will touch 8,500,” said Panda.
It has been found that the university has reserved 50% seats for Indian students, and 10% of Pakistan and Bangladesh each, 4% for Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, and the Maldives each, and 10% of non-SAARC countries.