PESHAWAR: Around 43827 candidates, including 17400 female students, on Sunday appeared in the entrance test held for admissions to the public and private medical and dental colleges.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s lone public-sector medical varsity, Khyber Medical University (KMU) had organised the entrance test and for the first time arranged 45 air-conditioned halls for the students in seven cities of the province.
Besides Peshawar, where the majority of applicants appeared in the test, KMU had arranged air-conditioned halls for the applicants in Mardan, Swat, Malakand, Haripur, Kohat and Dera Ismail Khan.
Majority of the students preferred to appear in the test in Peshawar and the KMU had to book most of the wedding halls in the city. Around 1600 students were accommodated in one spacious hall famous for wedding ceremonies and other important events in Peshawar Saddar.
The students and their parents were happy over the arrangements made for the test this year.
KMU is supposed to ensure all logistic support for the entrance test while the Higher Education Department (HED) supervises the whole exercise.
The Educational Testing and Evaluation Agency (ETEA) conducts the entrance test.
Unlike the previous year, no complaints were made by students and their parents about paper leak or mismanagement.
The ETEA is an autonomous body run by the Board of Governors (BoG) with the governor as its chairman.
Besides other arrangements, KMU had made medical arrangements for all the applicants with ambulances available.
A WhatsApp group was set up with administrative officials of hospitals in the seven cities as its members.
In Peshawar, the response of Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) was stated to be the best while Khyber Teaching Hospital (KTH) was reportedly disappointing due to lack of response.
Prof Arshad Javaid and secretary HED Fazal Wadood along with other officials visited different examination centres in Peshawar to ensure the test in a friendly environment.
The ETEA will announce results of the test within 24 hours and will be available on KMU website www.kmu.edu.pk as well as on ETEA website www.etea.edu.pk.
Alamgir Khan Afridi, media and protocol officer of the KMU said the results will also be communicated to the candidates individually via SMS on their mobile phones through specially prepared software by IT Section of KMU.
In Peshawar, 18027 candidates appeared in the entrance test, Mardan 5552, Swat 6544, Malakand 3259, Hazara 5241, Kohat 2076 and DI Khan 3130.
The candidates must be domiciled in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the merged tribal districts to appear in the ETEA entrance test for admission to any public sector medical/dental colleges of the province or any private sector medical/dental colleges throughout Pakistan.
Prof Dr Arshad Javaid, KMU Vice-Chancellor, told The News the overall arrangements for the entrance test especially holding the test in halls was a challenge for the KMU as well as ETEA and the provincial government.
He added that keeping in mind the increasing number of candidates and the bad weather conditions last year, not only the number of halls were increased from seven to 45 but it was also decided that the test should be conducted in indoor halls. KMU and HED had taken several initiatives this year to ensure transparency in the entrance test.
Secretary HED Manzoor Ahmad had coordinated with all officials and sought their assistance to safeguard the paper boxes.
And the first time the paper boxes would be sent to relevant centres in the presence of the HED, police and ETEA staff. Previously, ETEA would handle the transportation of the papers.
The government has set up a coordination council with secretary HED as its chairman and vice-chancellors Khyber Medical University (KMU) and University of Engineering and Technology (UET) Peshawar, and director ETEA as its members.
This year, there was no negative marking and the paper comprised of 200 questions, from four subjects, including English, Physics, Chemistry and Biology.
Previously English had 20 marks and the remaining three subjects had 60 marks each.
Since the successful students would study in medical and dental colleges, therefore Biology has 80 marks in the entrance test and 40 each for Chemistry and Physics while English has 20 marks.
In the past, applicants were required to get 60 per cent in the intermediate examination. Now they would need to secure 70 per cent marks.
