Jadavpur University will apply negative marking in the upcoming admission tests for undergraduate science courses, an official said.
Four of the five undergraduate science departments — physics, chemistry, mathematics and geography — that have traditionally admitted students based on their board marks, will screen students this year through admission tests.
Geological sciences will continue to admit students on the basis of their plus-II board marks.
A member of the admission committee in the science faculty said they had decided to dock marks for each wrong answer.
“Fifty MCQs (multiple-choice questions) will be set in each of the four subjects. For each correct answer, an examinee will be awarded 1 mark. And for each wrong answer, 0.25 will be docked. The fear of negative marking will prompt examinees to stay away from guesswork. Since we are expecting a huge number of candidates, negative marking will make eliminating undeserving candidates easier,” the member said.
“That will also help in faster publication of results.”
Around 5,000 candidates apply to study physics, said a member of the admission committee.
The committee struck down the idea of screening candidates through short-answer type questions as assessment of the scripts of such a huge number of candidates would come in the way of timely publication of results.
JU registrar Snehamanju Basu said the applicants could start applying for the undergraduate programmes from July 18.
“The dates of admission tests and other details will be mentioned in the admission notification that would be uploaded on the university’s website on Monday morning,” Basu told The Telegraph.
JU had over the past two years admitted undergraduate students in the arts faculty based on board marks as the on-campus admission tests could not be conducted because of the pandemic and periodic spikes in the number of cases.
In humanities, there is no provision for negative marking as the applicants are tested on descriptive questions.