“Eight deemed-to-be universities including the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) and Jamia Hamdard have also expressed a desire to use CUET scores to admit students to undergraduate course. I held a meeting yesterday with vice chancellors and directors of these eight deemed universities which receive maintenance grants from UGC,” Kumar said. He, however, did not name the private universities who have expressed interest in adopting CUET. Kumar had last week announced that CUET scores, and not Class 12 scores, will be mandatory for admission to 45 central universities and the central universities can fix their minimum eligibility criteria.

Asked whether the exam will lead to a “coaching culture” for undergraduate admissions, Kumar said, The exam will simply not require any coaching so there is no question of it giving push to a coaching culture. The exam will be completely based on class 12 syllabus. Lot of students are getting concerned whether the exam will also have questions from class 11 syllabus. The answer is a clear no.

“There will be no disadvantage to state board students and exam will also provide level playing field to students from all boards. Students from rural backgrounds appearing for exam in regional languages, coming from different economic backgrounds and are geographically distributed across the country, all will be treated on a par,” Kumar said. The UGC chief rejected apprehensions that the CUET will make board exams irrelevant.

“The universities will still use board exams as a qualifying criteria. Some universities can peg the requirement at 60 per cent, some may choose to set 70 per cent as requirement, so there is no question of board exams being made irrelevant. However, the focus on getting 100 per cent marks will definitely be reduced. Instances of a student getting 98 per cent but still not getting admission to a good college, will definitely get reduced after this,” he said.

The application process for the CUET for undergraduate courses in central universities will commence from April 2. According to NTA, the CUET will provide a single-window opportunity to students seeking admission in any central university across the country. The exam will be conducted in a Computer-Based Test (CBT) Mode. A common entrance test for UG admissions was proposed in the new National Education Policy (NEP), 2020. However, the concept is not entirely new.