CHENNAI: Now that the President has given assent to the Tamil Nadu Regulation of Admission in Professional Courses Bill that seeks to abolish the common entrance test, students will eagerly await the outcome of the litigation in the Madras High Court.

They will look forward to the court's ruling on whether the Act would over-rule the regulations of the Indian Medical Council Act, the Architects Act, the Dentists Act and the All India Council for Technical Education Act, all of which prescribe the conduct of an entrance examination in case students come from more than one Board.

The aspirants in Tamil Nadu include those from the State Board and a much smaller number from the CBSE and the ICSE. The Medical Council and the All-Indian Council for Technical Education have been cited as respondents in the petitions challenging the Act. The petitioners, including two students A.S. Prabhu and Madan Mohan, have said the Presidential assent under Article 254 (2) cannot give "an over-riding power to the State law," as the Acts under Entry 25 List III have been declared in the Constitution subject to legislative competence of the Centre. The other concern of students is in finding a way out to break a `tie' (more than one student getting the same mark) for finalising the rank list.

An analysis of the Plus-Two board examination results in 2005 shows that at every score, there were 300-400 students. For example, if one considers the medical rank list of 2005 (only the marks in biology, physics and chemistry) 344 students had scored 199.25 out of 200.

The difference among candidates in a CET-based admission rank list will be sharper.

Here the difference between two students can be just 0.05 marks, whereas if the list is based on the higher secondary, the difference will be 0.25 marks.

Anna University's former director of entrance tests and admissions P.V. Navaneethakrishnan says the normalisation procedure (for equating students from different Boards) should be more scientific.

Statistical parameters

Any formula should consider the statistical parameters of mean and standard deviation of each set of values to be normalised.

One should also consider the different maximum marks in the different streams.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail