The Tamil Nadu Admission to Undergraduate Medical Degree Courses Bill, 2021, adopted by the Assembly on Monday, seeks to provide admissions to undergraduate medical programmes to students based on their marks in the qualifying exam [Class XII] through “normalisation” methods.
How will the marks obtained by students from different Boards of education be normalised? Marks obtained by them in the relevant subjects in the qualifying exams conducted by various Boards will be equated with the marks obtained by them in the same subjects in the qualifying examination conducted by the State Board through the method of normalisation.
Under the method of normalisation, the highest marks obtained by students from various Boards, in each subject, is equated with the highest marks obtained by students of the State Board in that subject, and the relative marks obtained by others in the subject is determined accordingly.
For instance, if the highest mark secured by a student of the State Board in physics is 100 and the highest mark secured by a student of any other Board in the same subject is 96, “both the highest marks will be considered equal to 100,” according to the Bill passed in the House.
“If a student of the other Board secures 80 marks in physics, when the top mark in physics in the same board is 96, the 80 marks will be considered to be equal to 83.33 marks (100X80/96 = 83.33%),” it said. This was the formula that was followed prior to 2017 after the abolition of entrance tests to professional courses in Tamil Nadu.
After the normalisation of marks in the relevant subjects in the qualifying examination, the qualified students will be merged into a common merit list. “In cases where more than one student has got the same marks in the merit list, the inter-se merit among such students will be determined in such manner as may be prescribed by the rules made under this Act,” it said.
The appropriate authority will prepare the rank list for admitting students to the government seats, and allot students through centralised counselling. Admissions to government seats will be made following the rule of reservation.
