Presidency University will allow students who had written last year’s school-leaving exams to appear in the undergraduate admission test this year along with 2023 Plus-II candidates, a notice says.
Last year, Presidency had admitted students to undergraduate courses based on their plus-II board marks. Only those students who had written the Plus-II boards last year were allowed to apply for admission.
Students of the previous batch were not allowed because their Plus-II scores were based on a formula and the Presidency authorities did not want any discrepancy in the scores between students of the 2022 batch and those of 2021 to play a role in admission.
School-leaving exams could not be held in 2021 because of the pandemic and the boards adopted various formulae to award marks to the students.
Presidency has resumed admission tests this year. They are scheduled for May 20 and 21.
A bulletin issued by the West Bengal JEE board, which will conduct Presidency’s admission test, says: “Candidates must have passed (not before 2022) OR appeared (in 2023) in the (10+2 system) conducted by the West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education or any equivalent examination”.
“The batch of 2022 wrote the school-leaving test. The batch of 2023 will write the test, too. So the two batches are on a level playing field. But students of the 2021 batch ended up with high scores without having to write the exams because of the pandemic,” a Presidency official said, explaining the university’s decision to debar the 2021 Plus-II students from last year’s admission process.
Ramakrishna Mission Vidyamandira, Belur, which could not conduct admission tests in 2021 because of a renewed surge in Covid cases, had screened students based on their scores in the secondary and Plus-II board exams and, for some subjects, their performance in an online viva.
The college resumed its on-campus admission test last year.