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Friday March 29, 2024

Online admission test for GIK Institute raises concerns

By Yousaf Ali
July 29, 2022

PESHAWAR: A number of students and parents expressed reservations over the recently conducted online entrance test for admission to graduate degree programmes in 13 disciplines in the Ghulam Ishaq Khan (GIK) Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Topi in Swabi.

A group of parents visited the office of The News here and expressed concerns at the entrance test, the method of its conduction and the response of the management towards their complaints.

The parents believed that they were not properly conveyed the instructions about the test due to which their wards committed some avoidable mistakes. They said that they had informed the management of the institute about their concerns but no proper response was given to them.

The parents said universities and degree-awarding institutes across the country conducted physical tests, while GIKI was the only one to arrange the test online.

“This was the first experience of my child appearing in an online test for admission. He had not read the instructions properly. He could not arrange an external camera with his laptop and thus his test won’t be considered as rightful, which is not fair,” said a parent. Another parent said there was a serious issue of power outages and poor internet connectivity in his area due to which his child could not attempt the test properly.

There is a general issue of electricity loadshedding and internet connectivity in different parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, especially its newly merged tribal districts. The management should have taken care of this issue before going for the online test for admission, said the parent.

Some parents were of the opinion that most of the people in the province could hardly afford computers and laptops for their children.

“Now creating a separation environment for just one test and buying some new gadgets like external cameras and others were beyond our affordability,” said a parent. Reached for comments, pro-rector academics of the GIK Institute Prof Dr Waseem A Khan said that the online entrance test for admission in the BS programme was open for every query and complaint through chat, emails and other means and all the complaints were duly addressed within no time.

He said that some 3,000 students appeared in the entrance test arranged a few days back for the BS Engineering and 650 for BS Management Sciences.

A big number of students had not been able to appear in the test for a host of reasons, he said, adding, for them a separate test would be arranged probably on July 30 in which 1,500 to 2,000 students are expected to appear. Similarly, the entry tests for MS and PhD programmes would also be conducted online soon, he added.

The pro-rector said that the online test was arranged to save expenses and fatigue for the candidates. It would cost up to Rs3,000 for a candidate to appear in a physical test if he comes to Islamabad or Swabi from Karachi and other far-flung areas, he explained.

While they can appear in an online test anywhere. The only requirement was that they would have to use an external camera and the total cost of an external camera is not more than Rs2,000, he said.

“We opted to conduct tests online to save the time and finances of the students. The world is fast progressing and everything is going online,” he said. He said the institute launched a vibrant campaign for admissions on social media as well as print and electronic media.

Some 10,000 students showed interest in admission to GIK institute. Over 5,000 got themselves registered for the test and 3,650 appeared in the first test while around 1,500 to 2,000 would appear in the test to be conducted on July 30.

This shows the popularity of the tests and students’ interest in the GIK institute.

“The fee for the entrance test has been reduced from Rs5,000 before to Rs1000 now,” another official of the university said.

He said that only GIK Institute conducted the online test and no other institution in the country was doing so. A number of steps were taken to ensure the transparency of the test. Physical invigilation was arranged and two software were used, he said.

The official said the total number of seats for students in 13 disciplines of the bachelor’s degree programme was 570 and such a huge number of applicants from across the country have shown interest in admission to the institute.