While Joint Entrance Examination (Main) will be held in January and April, NEET will be held in February and May
New Delhi: The Ministry of Human Resource Development Saturday announced that entrance exams for medical and engineering courses will be conducted twice a year, in order to give aspirants more chances.
Starting from the 2019 academic session, the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) (Main) for admission to engineering colleges will be conducted in January and April, while the National Eligibility Entrance Test (NEET) for medical courses will be conducted in February and May.
These exams will now be conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA), the government’s nodal agency to conduct all kinds of entrance tests. The NTA was approved by Cabinet in November 2017 as an autonomous organisation to conduct entrance examinations for higher educational institutions.
‘Will give students more chances’
Addressing reporters here, HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar said the move would reduce stress in students. “For the first time in the history of competitive examinations, the JEE (Main) and NEET (UG) will be conducted twice before admissions in the next academic session. This will give more chances to students thereby giving adequate opportunity to bring out his/her best and reducing stress which develops due to single exam conducted on one single day in the year,” he said.
The minister clarified that while students can attempt both tests, it is not compulsory for them to do so. “The two tests (each for JEE (Main) & NEET (UG)) will be equated using psychometric methods, standardisation techniques and best of the equated scores will be used for the admissions,” he added.
The exams will be conducted online in order to make sure that there are no leakages and other malpractices.
For students from rural areas, NTA will establish a network of test practice centres so that they have an opportunity to practice before the exams. Schools and engineering colleges with computer centres would be identified and kept open on Saturday/Sunday starting from third week of August. These centres will be available for students to use, the minister said.
“All tests would be set in a scientific manner with the test items developed jointly by the subject matter experts and psychometricians,” Javadekar said.
Apart from NEET and JEE Mains, NTA will also conduct National Eligibility Test (NET) and other competitive exams.