The confusion over state’s participation in the National Eligibility and Entrance Test (NEET) continues as there has been no formal declaration on part of the state government on whether the national entrance will come into effect from 2013-14, replacing the state joint entrance examination, EAMCET.
Though the Medical Council of India (MCI) had decided at a meeting in August that the test would be conducted in Telugu, Tamil, Gujarati and Bengali apart from Hindi and English to address the concerns of students from non-English medium schools, the ambiguity on conduct of the test and participation of private medical college persists.
The national entrance was contested by students, parents and corporate colleges as a disadvantage for students from rural areas due to the medium of the paper as well as the syllabus, which is more similar to that taught in CBSE schools.
The feedback on the MCI website shows that around 81.6 per cent of respondents, mainly from Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat, raised objections on the medium of the question paper that will be framed during the review period of the NEET syllabus displayed on the MCI website.
“Students are also not given enough time to prepare for the entrance examination, which has a different syllabus pattern when compared to EAMCET. For the students appearing for the examination in May 2013, the syllabus taught during intermediate first year for competitive examinations has to be revised,” a lecturer at a corporate junior college in the city M. Prabhakar said.
The NEET guidelines require that 85 per cent of the MBBS seats in the medical colleges across the state be reserved under the state quota. The remaining 15 per cent remain open to candidates from other states.
The decision on participation of 26 private medical colleges from the state, which account for close to 3500 seats, will have a significant impact on the total number of seats in the national quota.
Officials refused to comment on the implementation of NEET as well as the willingness of private medical colleges to participate in the same from 2013.
“As NEET will be applicable from 2013-14, the association of private medical colleges would prefer to stay away from the entrance. We will conduct our own entrance examination. We do not want to give away 15 percent of our seats to the national pool as the fee structure proposed by the government is too low. It has to be ratified by the government and we will ask for a uniform fee structure in both convener and management quota seats,” treasurer of AP Private Medical College Association Dr G Bhaskara Rao said