There is a growing concern about various entry tests for admission to professional engineering and medical colleges. These tests are superimposed over the normal requirements for admission like FSc or A Level education. The erstwhile system of grades or divisions with specific marks obtained in a conventional examination was once the rule for admission.
The institution of entry tests to determine the fitness is wasteful and puts extra burden on candidates from distant rural areas to go for entry tests, which are perfunctory and can in no way be a substitute for normal mandatory prerequisite examinations carried out by established institutions.
It looks more like extra judicial or double jeopardy, which cannot have precedence over normal examinations once passed for admission to a superior college or university. Such a wasteful practice ought to be dispensed with as it is no way superior to determining the merit of a student than the normal mandatory test or requirement for admission and only adds extra financial burden to people that are already groaning under financial hardship.
MUHAMMAD YAQOOB BHATTI
Lahore
