Presidency University will announce after August 10 how it will admit students to undergraduate courses, a decision aspirants have been waiting for since the state JEE board expressed its inability to conduct the institute’s entrance test amid the pandemic.

Presidency vice-chancellor Anuradha Lohia said she had asked the teachers to suggest to the admissions committee how the undergraduate aspirants could be admitted.

“Since being informed by the JEE board (about its inability to conduct the test) on Friday, I have asked the heads of the departments to start discussions with their faculties to suggest how they want to admit candidates. We will go through the feedback in detail. The university does not want to make any announcement before August 10,” she told The Telegraph.

The higher education department had last month advised the universities to start receiving applications online from August 10. A copy of the order has reached Presidency.

Although Lohia did not comment on whether Presidency would admit students based on their plus-II board marks alone, an official said admission based on plus-II marks was the only option because the university could not hold the admission test on its own.

He said that before the JEE board was entrusted with conducting the admission test in 2015 and Presidency resolved to admit students through a test, the institute used to select students by giving equal weightage to the entrance exam score and plus-II marks.

“If the extraordinary circumstances this year demand that the admission be only based on plus-II board marks, then we have to accept it,” the official said.

At JU, the arts departments used to shortlist students for admission by giving equal weightage to the entrance test and plus-II board scores. Last week, the university decided that the arts departments would admit students solely on the basis of their plus-II marks.

A teacher of chemistry at Presidency said they were opposed to admitting students in their undergraduate course based on plus-II marks because students from the Bengal board did not write the chemistry paper in the school-leaving exams this year.

The state HS council could not hold tests in physics, chemistry and statistics, among other subjects, because of the Covid pandemic. The students had the best marks in the papers they had written awarded to the ones they could not.

“So it could be that the score in English has been awarded to chemistry. It would be difficult for us to consider the score of chemistry,” said the teacher.

“We have left it to the teachers to suggest what they deem fit,” said VC Lohia.