3.9 lakh students in Maharashtra to take MH-CET for engineering, pharmacy courses today

Officials from the Directorate of Technical Education (DTE) said that this was the highest number of applications ever received by the state

Close to 3.89 lakh students will appear for the Common Entrance Test (MH-CET) on May 11, the highest ever to take the state-level examination for engineering and pharmacy courses.

Students who clear this exam, which will be conducted across 1,110 centres in the state, will be eligible for admissions to engineering and pharmacy colleges in Maharashtra. (HT)

Students who clear this exam, which will be conducted across 1,110 centres in the state, will be eligible for admissions to engineering and pharmacy colleges in Maharashtra.

Officials from the Directorate of Technical Education (DTE) said that this was the highest number of applications ever received by the state. The number could be attributed to students unsure of doing well in national level tests like Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) and National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET), said experts.

“JEE has negative marking and the syllabus is vast, so it is possible that many students chose to appear for CET over the other national level entrance exams,” said Dayanand Meshram, joint director, DTE. He added that the spike also shows an interest in professional courses. “DTE recently received over 94,000 applications for just about 32,000 seats in management institutes. This shows that demand for professional courses is high,” he added.

While registrations for MH-CET ended on March 30, the online process was re-opened and extended till April 10 after requests from several candidates who could not finish the registration process within the stipulated time. Close to 2,000 more registrations were made in this period and each student had to pay double the fee as a fine for the delay in completing this process.