Admission to engineering varsities: Only 245 out of 7,741 candidates qualify entrance test

PESHAWAR: Only 245 of a total 7,741 candidates could qualify as the Educational Testing and Evaluation Agency (ETEA) on Tuesday announced the result of the entry test for the public sector as well as private engineering universities and colleges in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Interestingly, the number of seats offered for admission in the four campuses of the University of Engineering and Technology (UET) Peshawar and UET Mardan are 1430 and some reserved seats are specified against different quotas. There are a number of private engineering universities and colleges as well and appearing in the entrance test is compulsory for them too.

However, the spokesperson for the UET Peshawar, when reached for comments, explained that qualifying the ETEA test was not necessary. As per the merit criteria one has to appear in the test and he/she doesn’t need to qualify it, she said.

Merit is prepared on the basis of one’s score in Secondary School Certificate examination, Higher Secondary School Certificate examination, and the entrance test. The percentage for matriculation marks is 10, for FSc, 50 and for entrance test 40. Therefore, it would not be appropriate to say that so many students have qualified the test and so many have failed to qualify it, she argued.

It looks really absurd that the entrance test is compulsory and qualifying it is not necessary. “It’s strange; quite strange to hear that one has to appear in a test and he doesn’t need to qualify it. If this is the case, there should be no need for the test. The admission should be offered on the basis of matriculation and FSc as used to be done in the past,” said an academician.

Looking at the result of the entrance test one finds that a total of 8155 students had registered for the test. A total of 7741 of them appeared in the test and 245 among them could bag 40 percent and above marks.

The total marks of the test were 800. Only one student namely Muhammad Hamza among the lot could cross the figure of 640 and got 80 percent marks. He got 676 marks. Four students could get marks between 560 to 639 i.e. a percentage between 70 and 79. These four students are Ubaidur Rahman, who secured 620 marks, Laiba Gulali, 600 marks, Mohammad Aarish Shah, 584 and Hadia Tahir, 570.

Similarly, only 10 students could get a percentage between 60 and 69 and marks between 480 and 559. At least 51 students could get a percentage between 50 and 59 and marks between 400 and 479. Some 179 students had secured marks between 320 to 399 at a percentage of 40 to 40. Even if 33 percent marks are considered as pass marks, this “milestone” too was achieved by just 223 students. As many as 7,273 students had got marks less than 264 at a percentage below 33, according to the result sheet. The poor results shows that whoever has got marks more than the 33 percent would definitely secure admission in the public sector institutions.

The admission authority would even lower the threshold of the entrance test for admission to some 20 percent. Only then they would be able to select the nearly 1500 students for admissions in the four campuses of UET Peshawar, which included Peshawar, Bannu, Abbottabad and Swat. The Mardan Campus has already been upgraded as a separate university.

A number of private universities like Cecos, Abasyn, Iqra, Sarhad and several degree awarding institutes and colleges are offering admissions in engineering programmes. There are private universities and colleges in other parts of the province as well, that also impart engineering education and the ETEA entrance test is compulsory for all of them.