The Maharashtra common entrance test (MH-CET) conducted for admission into engineering and pharmacy courses could change from next year as the state has asked authorities to bring it at par with the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) from 2018-19.

A Government Resolution (GR) was issued to announce the decision. “The GR clearly states that MH-CET for engineering and pharmacy courses will have to be brought at par with JEE in terms of the level of difficulty, paper pattern as well as quality of tests from next year,” said Dayanand Meshram, joint director of Directorate of Technical Education (DTE) which conducts the exam. The GR was released by the state last week and will be applicable from next year. This year the test will be based on previous year’s pattern and syllabus.

This change comes months after officials from DTE had proposed changes to the government in the MH-CET exam, in order to bring better quality applicants for engineering courses across institutes in the state. “Since the entrance exam to all medical and health science courses is already at par with national level exams, we wanted to make sure we avoid any last-minute changes to the engineering and pharmacy entrance test. This would give enough time to students to prepare for the entrance exam in 2018,” added Meshram.

Among some of the changes proposed, DTE asked for the syllabus for MH-CET 2018-19 onwards to be based on the combined syllabus of classes XI and XII like JEE, instead of only class XII which has been the norm for CET. “The GR clearly mentions that the state higher secondary education board has to upgrade their class XI and XII syllabus accordingly, so it looks like we will stick with the state syllabus only,” added Meshram.

While experts and senior officials are still sceptical about this move, the fact that this decision is not last minute has given relief to many.

“This way students will be better prepared for the entrance exam, unlike medical aspirants last year who had less than two months to come up with CBSE syllabus for the NEET exam in 2016” said the professor of a technical institute in the city on condition of anonymity. He added that this move will help bring state students at par with others from across the change. “However, the government needs to make sure that it is implemented well, and no other changes are introduced last minute,” he added.

READ MORE https://goo.gl/XXwDVZ  - Govt GR.