NET aspirants wary of new format

Updated on: Friday, May 11, 2012

For most aspirants of the National Eligibility Test (NET), the format introduced by the University Grants Commission this year, means they need to be thorough with the theory part of the syllabus.

M. Nathiya who submitted her application form on Wednesday, said, “This year there is no descriptive paper. All the three papers have only objective questions, which means it is likely to be more difficult.”

“Having several options can be confusing and hence we need to be thorough with the syllabus matter,” she said, standing in the long-winding queue of applicants. While some hope that the objective questions will be an opportunity to guess answers, most applicants expect the difficulty level to go up this year.

According to S. Gurusamy, co-ordinator of the examination, University of Madras, the number of applicants registered with the university is expected to increase by at least 3,000 this year.  “The university has insisted that all faculty members in its constituent colleges should have the UGC prescribed qualifications. So there is a mad rush to apply this year,” he says. The University plans to have around 10 examination centres in the city.

The applicants are from Chennai and neighbouring districts. History teacher S. Simiyon from Kondancherry near Thiruvallur travelled three hours to get to the city and submit his application. “This is my third attempt, and I hope I pass this year. There was great difficulty in submitting the online application since the server is always down,” said the candidate.

“Since the examination is in English, I find it hard to clear. However, I can attempt the State Level Eligibility Test in Tamil. But it is not regularly conducted by universities every year. It would benefit people like me, if SLET were to be held at least once a year,” he said.

This year, there are more applicants in the computer application stream. “Commerce is one area that generally has the highest number of applicants every year. This is because most colleges have the commerce stream. But computer application is gaining popularity as a lot of applicants have chosen the subject this year,” said Mr. Gurusamy.

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