Panjab University, Chandigarh.The Punjab University (PU), Chandigarh has introduced an entrance exam for admission to MA Economics programme. The admissions to the same were earlier conducted on the basis of merit. The same will be implemented from coming academic season 2019-20 onwards.
The entrance exam is expected to be on the format of the already existing admission test for PG-level courses in the varsity. Candidates will have to answer 75 multiple choice-based questions within the duration of 1.5 hours. Each question will be of one mark each. For every wrong answer, 0.4 marks will be deducted.
The proposal of conducting entrance exam was made by the economics department and was passed in the day-long meeting of Senate, a governing body at the university.
“MA Economics is one of the most in-demand courses at PU. For a total of 80 seats, more than 12,000 applications a year (on an average) are received by the department of economics,” informed a senior faculty member from the department.
Talking to indianexpress.com, Senate member, professor (emeritus), PU said, “The move is aimed to give a level-field to students. We receive entries from all across the country. Different universities and institutes have a different benchmark and marking systems, often students from institutes with strict marking systems are left at disadvantage. After the entrance exam, there would be equal treatment for all the students and only meritorious ones will get through.”
The syllabus of the entrance exam will be based on BA (honours) and BA economics courses of the varsity.
According to reports, the exam is expected to have 10 questions each from different economics topics including microeconomics, macroeconomics, Indian economics and econometrics.
The process will be implemented from 2019-20 academics year onwards.
