In a significant shift, the University Grants Commission (UGC) has announced the abandonment of score normalization for the Common University Entrance Test (CUET)-UG and the National Eligibility Test (NET) starting from this year.
The decision was confirmed by UGC Chief Jagadesh Kumar, who stated that with both exams being conducted in a single shift for a subject, the need for score normalization is eliminated.
Normalization, a process aimed at ensuring fairness by adjusting scores to make them comparable across different exam sessions, has been a subject of contention among students who felt it unfairly impacted their performance.
Kumar emphasized that the adoption of the Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) mode this year will enable the administration to conduct the tests across the country on the same day, avoiding the necessity for multiple-day exams for the same paper.
According to the UGC chairman, conducting exams over several days necessitates normalization, which is considered a scientific method to maintain fairness.
However, with the shift to a single-day, single-shift format, this requirement is deemed unnecessary.
The CUET-UG, scheduled to take place from May 15 to May 24, will witness a departure from its previous Computer Based Test (CBT) mode for 15 subjects, which will now be conducted in pen-and-paper format, while 48 subjects will remain online. Similarly, the UGC-NET, traditionally a CBT exam, will be conducted in pen-and-paper mode on June 16.