Engineering, agriculture and allied medical courses aspirants will have to write the entrance test online from next year as the Telangana government has decided to make EAMCET completely online.
Officials have taken an in-principle decision on this and will soon announce it formally. Apart from EAMCET, all the other entrance tests conducted by the Telangana State Council of Higher Education (TSCHE) will also be online from the next academic year.
The eagerness of the TSCHE can be understood as the Andhra Pradesh government has successfully conducted all the entrance tests online this year itself without any hiccups. However, the TSCHE wants to be cautious as it faced problems with the conduct of ECET (for Polytechnic students for lateral entry into engineering courses) online apparently due to the fault of the technical support given by a private agency.
The TSCHE Chairman, T. Papi Reddy admitted that they faced some problems that dragged the examination by over four to six hours. But he says for EAMCET they plan to engage the services of Telangana State Technical Services (TSTS) that has an MoU with the Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), which is reputed and known for its quality despite charging a bit higher. Even the Andhra Pradesh government used the services of TCS for all its entrance tests.
Since about 1.5 lakh to 2 lakh candidates are expected to take the EAMCET, it will be conducted in several sessions on the lines of international tests like the GRE or GMAT or IELTS. Last year, AP conducted its EAMCET in six sessions, accommodating about 25,000 candidates in each session.
Mr Papi Reddy said they need to first build up a huge question bank ensuring the standard of questions is not diluted and remains qualitative for each session. “We will take the experience of APSCHE and make our exam more effective and qualitative,” he said. Students can easily adopt to the new structure as they have already been attempting NEET, JEE and other national level exams online.”
Online exam is likely to curb the expenditure on the EAMCET as the TSCHE spends lakhs of rupees for its printing and also to maintain secrecy.
The horrifying experience of EAMCET 2016 paper leakage is still haunting and the repeated exams gave nightmares to students.
