The University Grants Commission has invited feedback on the new set of reforms proposed by an expert committee to be incorporated in the next Common University Entrance Test (CUET) exams.

The expert committee, constituted by the UGC, had recommended a slew of changes including the focus of the test papers for both undergraduate and postgraduate students.

CUET exams were introduced as a step toward standardising the admission process for undergraduate (UG) and postgraduate (PG) programmes across universities.

“Based on feedback from past years, it is also essential to continuously improve the examination process to provide a better, more efficient and conducive environment for students taking CUET,” the UGC said.

Among the reforms that have been proposed, the test has been reimagined with a different agenda. For CUET-UG 2025, the General Test currently in vogue is to be redesigned as the General Aptitude Test and for the CUET-PG 2025, The General Paper is proposed to be redesigned to cater to skill-based and certain professions based on UG knowledge so that universities can use it for programmes in those areas.

As per the official announcement, students can appear for a maximum of five subjects. This is irrespective of the subjects they have chosen for study in Grade 12. Previously, the maximum number of subjects students could take was six. The total number of subjects, however, has been reduced from 63 to 37.

“For the 13 languages (English, Hindi, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu), the language-specific papers to test proficiency are to be conducted as per CUET-UG 2024. For all the remaining languages including foreign languages (20 as per CUET-UG 2024), admissions in the programmes of these languages are to be made based on performance in the General Aptitude Test,” the committee has proposed.

Among the proposals put forth for PG is that students will have to attempt all questions mandatorily and there will be negative marking. The medium of examination will be bilingual.

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