After boards, HSC students gear up for various competitive tests

PUNE: With the higher secondary certificate (HSC, Standard XII) examination about to end, students will soon start gearing up for several competitive tests.
As many as 5.8 lakh students have appeared for the science faculty from the state board and a majority are expected to appear for the entrance exams, for engineering, medical, law, architecture, pharmacy courses, among others, scheduled over the next month.

The HSC exam will end on March 20 and the entrance exams will begin from April. Shreyas Pathak, an HSC student, said, “The main papers physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics are over. There are about two more papers to go after which the board exam will be over. I will soon start preparing for the state common entrance test as my mock exams are scheduled from next week.”

Medical aspirants have enrolled for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET)to be held on May 6. The joint entrance exam (JEE) Mains, for admissions to engineering courses, will be held online on April 1, while the offline exam has been scheduled on April 15 and 16.

Students, who clear JEE Mains, will appear for the JEE Advanced for admissions to the Indian Institutes of Technology, which will be conducted on May 20. The entrance exam for BITS Pilani is scheduled on May 14.

Another student Soham Kulkarni said, “The pattern for all these exams is different. Thanks to the higher weightage given for entrance exams, we tend to concentrate more on the competitive tests.”