MAHA-CET 2018: 4.34 lakh candidates will appear for exam

Number of aspirants has gone up by 14%; last year 3.82 lakh students had given the test

Maharashtra-Common Entrance Test (MH-CET) for undergraduate engineering, pharmacy and agriculture courses will be held today at 1,260 examination centres.

This year, MH-CET aspirants will have to study Class 11 and 12 syllabus of state education board. (Pic for representation/HT file)

The number of exam centers this year have increased by 150, thus indicating that number of students appearing for the exam have gone up. This year, 4.34 lakh aspirants registered for MH-CET , an increase of almost 14%, as compared to 3.82 lakh students last year.

For the first time, agriculture aspirants also registered for MH-CET. This came after the state decided that admissions for seven undergraduate courses will be done on the basis of aspirants’ scores in the state and national entrance tests, including MH-CET.

Aspirants who chose physics-chemistry-biology (PCB) combination will be competing for more than 13,000 pharmacy seats and around 11,000 agriculture seats. Those who opted for physics-chemistry-mathematics (PCM) or both the combinations will be eligible for 1.38 lakh engineering seats and 15,000 agriculture and pharmacy seats.

In 2016-17, around 45% engineering seats across Maharashtra went unclaimed. The situation improved in 2017-18 with 36% vacant seats . On the contrary, only 299 and 138 seats were vacant in pharmacy and agricultural courses, respectively.

This year, MH-CET aspirants will have to study Class 11 and 12 syllabus of state education board. Until last year, the exam focused only on Class 12 syllabus. Around 20% of questions in the test will be from Class 11 curriculum.

Changes in MH-CET 2018

• To bring in better quality applicants for engineering courses across institutes in the state, difficulty level of the test will be on par with JEE

• Each section of MH-CET paper (mathematics, physics & chemistry and biology) will have 20% (10 questions) from the Class 11 syllabus and 80% (40 questions) from the Class 12 syllabus. All questions will be multiple choice

• Students for seven undergraduate agriculture courses will have to compulsorily take state or national entrance tests for engineering, health science and pharmacy courses

• Increase in the number of Centers and Applicants.