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The University Grants Commission is working on a proposal to combine the engineering and medical entrances into the Common University Test (CUET-UG). M Jagadesh, UGC Chairman, spoke that as per the proposal, instead of appearing for the four subjects- Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, and Biology- in three entrance exams, students can take the exam once and be eligible for and explore diverse fields of study. He added that the higher education controller is working out a committee to contemplate with different stakeholders to reach an agreement.

The Chairman said that the proposal is, can we blend all these entrance exams so that our students don't have to appear for multiple entrance examinations based on the same knowledge base? He added that students should have one single entrance exam but numerous possibilities to apply among the specializations.

The proposal highlights that students should not go through the stress of multiple examinations while they are being tested in the same set of subjects. Some students may be interested in engineering or medicine. If they don't get admitted to engineering or medical college, they will get admitted to general education. So is it possible to have only one CUET for all fields? The students interested in engineering- their marks in physics, mathematics, and chemistry could be used as a ranking list and the same for medicine. If students don't get into engineering or medicine college, then under CUET, they will still have an opportunity to go to different programs using the same marks in either physics, biology, mathematics, or chemistry.

The University Grants Commission is seeing the move from the point of streamlining the logistics for the candidates and the NTA- National Testing Agency.

M Jagadesh Kumar stated that the other characteristic is the logistics of placing the computing installations in centers. In some cases, as we have seen in CUET-UG, students are not given their first preference, so they have to travel a longer distance instead of appearing in their own city. If they decrease the number of examinations, there is a possibility from the logistics point of view for NTA. It will become more straightforward. And for question papers, they had to separate sets for NEET, JEE, and CUET. But now they can have only one set of question papers for all subjects.

Kumar reported that University Grants Commission (UGC) is looking forward to building like-mindedness through considerations among the stakeholder for the single examination so that students can be allowed to write it twice a year. The first can happen right after the board exams and the second one in December.

On bringing the pen-paper NEET-UG under its fold, Chairman said that the future is computer-based multi-choice question type tests because OMR-based examinations still have some hardships in terms of the accurateness of the evaluation.