Separate entrance for BDS, agriculture, veterinary courses?

There will be no respite for medical aspirants from the entrance exams even if the State Government's decision to join the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) for medical admissions is fruitful as they still have to write a separate entrance for admissions into dental, agriculture, veterinary, pharmacy or biotech courses.

In fact, burden on the students will be doubled as they have to prepare for both NEET and the entrance test for these courses as the variation is huge between the Intermediate syllabus and the CBSE. Teachers say Intermediate syllabus of botany and zoology is 50 per cent different compared to CBSE while it is 15 to 20 per cent with regard to chemistry and physics.

Hitherto, the students attempting medical entrance eyed not only MBBS course but also the BDS, veterinary and agriculture courses in the order of preference. Since the MBBS seats are limited the next option for medical rankers is BDS. In fact, the admission is conducted for both the courses simultaneously by the NTR University of Health Sciences and students are mentally prepared to take BDS once MBBS seats are fully taken. The State has 1,830 dental seats in 21 dental colleges as of now and the number may change at the time of admissions as some colleges fail to get renewal of affiliation while new colleges also get into the picture. Once the medical and dental admissions are over students prefer to choose Bachelor of Veterinary Sciences (B.V.Sc) and B.Sc (Agriculture) courses offered by the Acharya N.G. Ranga Agricultural University (ANGRAU). There are about 270 seats in B.V.Sc and Bachelor of Fisheries Sciences and 500-odd in B.Sc (Agriculture) courses in eight colleges of ANGRAU.

What is bothering students and parents is that government doesn't have any clarity on the issue. Will students have to prepare for separate tests for BDS, Agriculture and Pharmacy or will it be a combined test? Or will the admissions be done based on Intermediate marks like in Tamil Nadu? What will happen to the 25 per cent weightage? Officials are also clueless and say there was no serious discussion for alternative solutions. “We have created unnecessary confusion among students and parents,” an official remarked.

Burden on students as there is huge variation in State and CBSE syllabus of botany, zoology
Officials clueless on NEET covering dental, agriculture, veterinary, or biotech courses