KOLKATA: In a giant tech leap, Calcutta University will conduct the entrance examinations to its postgraduate courses online from this academic session.Online tests for PG courses at the university and its affiliated colleges will make the process more organized, introduce transparency and manage it professionally, as over 35,000 candidates were likely to take the exam this year, said educationists. Presidency University and Jadavpur University still conduct their entrance tests on pen and paper.Several calls to Sonali Chakravarti Banerjee, vice-chancellor of Calcutta University, went unanswered but a senior official involved in the process confirmed the development. “The centralized entrance tests to PG courses will be conducted online. We are in the process of hiring an agency to conduct the computer-based exams. The dates will be declared in a few weeks,” the official said. The online tests will be held for MA, MSc, MCom, MTech and journalism and education.Candidates will get multiple-choice questions. Just before the exams start, they will get individual passwords. The applicants will also be provided with an orientation programme before the tests. All exam centres will have IT professionals to guide the candidates and tackle any glitch.Earlier, the university had its own entrance exams for the PG courses in its 24 departments, while its affiliated institutes with postgraduate courses — such as Bethune College, Lady Brabourne College, Loreto College, Maulana Azad College and Basanti Devi College — held their individual tests. Subsequently, with the introduction of a centralized entrance test, the individual entrance exams at the affiliated colleges were done away with.Till last year, the tests were held offline on optical mark recognition (OMR) sheets, but given the sheer number of applicants, the centralized entrance test will be held online for the university as well as the affiliated colleges from this year (2019-2020 session). But CU-affiliated institutes with minority status, such as Scottish Church College and St Paul’s Cathedral Mission College, held their own tests till last year, and this year, too, they are likely to be exempt from the online rule.Some CU professors, however, said conducting the entrance examinations online might pose difficulty for some candidates, particularly those coming from the interiors, and not comfortable in handling computers fast.

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