Govt plans to merge NEET, JEE into CUET: UGC chairperson Jagadesh Kumar UGC chairperson M Jagadesh Kumar said the government aims to merge the national engineering and medical entrance exams into CUET by next year The government is exploring the possibility of merging the national engineering and medical entrance exams into the existing Common University Entrance Test (CUET), University Grants Commission (UGC) chairperson M Jagadesh Kumar said on Friday. Kumar said the government was looking at introducing the integrated entrance exam at the earliest, preferably by next year. “We have three major entrance examinations, that is NEET, JEE (Main) and CUET and a large number of students appearing for these entrances are common. And all these examinations are conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA). Therefore, we are thinking why not use CUET scores alone for admission to multiple disciplines, ” he said. CUET was launched this year for undergraduate admissions to 90 universities including 45 central universities. Officials said 1.05 million students applied for CUET, making it the second biggest exam after NEET which received 1.8 million applications. Kumar said the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 also envisages “one nation, one entrance” and this will reduce students’ burden of taking multiple entrance examinations for higher education. While the National Eligibility Entrance Exam (NEET) is conducted for admission to medical courses including MBBS and BDS, the Joint Entrance Examination (Main) is designed for admission to various engineering courses including NIITs, IIITs and other centrally funded technical colleges and shortlist students who can appear for the JEE-Advanced exam for admission to the Indian Institutes of Technologies (IITs). “NEET requires biology, physics and chemistry, JEE requires mathematics, physics and chemistry. All these subjects are already in CUET. Therefore, it won’t be an issue for medical and engineering colleges to use CUET scores for admission, ” the UGC chairperson said. Kumar said that the union ministry of education and UGC have started the discussions to prepare the stakeholders. “We don’t want to announce anything in a sudden manner just a few months before the exams, ” he said. The UGC will form a committee, including experts from diverse fields, to look at the present forms of entrance exams. “The committee will work on preparing recommendations for an integrated entrance exam. These recommendations will then be shared with the stakeholders for consultation and feedback and based on that the ministry and UGC will decide the modalities of the exam. A lot of planning has to be done, ” Kumar said.