Jadavpur University will consider only Plus II board results for admission to undergraduate humanities courses and there will be no admission tests this year.

The mechanism cannot be turned into a precedent, the English and comparative literature departments have told the university’s admissions committee. “An exception has been made this year because of the pandemic they have said,” an admissions committee member said.

There have been attempts in the past to scrap admission tests.

The economics department will announce its decision later. Bengali will factor in the language scores at the secondary level apart from the Plus II results.

For Bengali, 70 per cent weightage will be given to Plus II language scores — 55 per cent of Bengali and 15 per cent of English marks. “Besides, 20 per cent weightage will be given to Bengali and 10 per cent to English at the Class X board exams,” a university official said.

The admissions committee in humanities met on Thursday to finalise the admission criteria.

The Bengali department follows the practice of considering the language scores at the secondary level to prepare the merit list when they cannot hold admission tests, a teacher said. This is to ascertain if the aspirant has been a consistent performer, the teacher said.

In English, 50 per cent weightage will be given to the language group and the rest to the aggregate (best of four subjects) from the Plus II board results.

In comparative literature, 60 per cent weightage will be given to the language group and the rest to the aggregate (best of four subjects) from the Plus II board results.

A teacher of the English department said the university administration had in 2018 tried to scrap admissions tests in deference to an education department’s suggestion and teachers had to launch a protest to retain tests.

“We don’t want to give the administration any scope of citing this year’s mechanism as some kind of a precedent to scrap future admission tests,” the teacher said.

A teacher of comparative literature said they shared the concern.

The university has been admitting students to humanities courses based on equal weightage to admissions tests and Plus II board results for the past two years.

In international relations, sociology and Sanskrit, the merit list will be prepared based on aggregate, combining the best of four subjects from the Plus II board results.

In history and philosophy, the list will be prepared based on aggregate, combining the best of three subjects and one language subject from the Plus II board results.

The admissions committee for science will meet on Saturday to decide on the admission criteria.